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[Wait A Minute, Was I tricked Into Playing a Pokémon-like, Roguelike, Deckbuilder-Like? Again?]

1

TalkBack / Montabi (Switch 2) Review

« on: August 06, 2026, 08:00:00 AM »

Wait A Minute, Was I tricked Into Playing a Pokémon-like, Roguelike, Deckbuilder-Like? Again?

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/76697/montabi-switch-2-review

Stop. Look. You know, before I say the words. Take a moment. Breathe in. Breath out. We good? Okay. We good. So Montabi is a roguelike deckbuilder. While I hope that I’ve not remained with just fans of this particular genre, I want to make it clear that I am pretty firmly burned out on the Roguelike and Roguelite categories. Call it the reviewer’s curse. While I can see from a design perspective, this genre is enticing to a lot of developers and players. As someone who has played so many run-based titles in the last few years, I am frankly over the novelty. That said, I have to give it to Montabi. Its blend of strategic gameplay, reminiscent of Mega Man: Battle Network, Pokémon and deckbuilding had me coming back to it again and again. Completing multiple successful runs and still finding interesting combinations and Montabi creatures, this is an unexpected hit for me in a packed year.

From the get go, Montabi is pretty unashamed of its inspirations. In a society where people and mysterious monsters called Montabi live together, you play as a teenager whose Montabi gets stolen by Team X. Setting out with a starter Montabi you begin fighting rogue Montabi and adding them to your team. Each creature comes with its own unique playstyle as well as a trainer who has to support them in fights. As you progress through the city, you can find equipment and charms, and increase the potential of your deck with stickers. Level up enough and your Montabi will evolve into a stronger version of itself and gain new passive abilities.

Fights take place on a 3x6 grid where you can place your trainer and Montabi, as well as keep a few in reserve to switch out. To perform actions you play cards. As I said, each Montabi also fights differently. Some use special techniques such as causing bleeding that will damage an opponent whenever they take an action. Others place traps and pickups that increase in strength the longer they are down. Yet others rely on discarding cards for increasing the damage output on their other cards. Every one of my runs I made the attempt to try new combinations, and they are wonderfully balanced. I never felt like I could rely only on a single technique and finding the synergies between different Montabi always felt satisfying, especially when I unlocked different trainers, such as the fighter who basically became my glass cannon alongside their creatures.

What makes it all fall into place is the fact that your opponent’s upcoming attacks are clearly communicated and telegraphed–both on the field and in their attack descriptions–so you can plan ahead without any uncertainty. Positioning is key and occasionally just swapping out a Montabi that gets targeted by all enemies can turn the tide of battle. Battles become these strategic chess matches, in a similar way to Fire Emblem or X-COM. Though one major gripe I have is that your on screen cursor can be too easy to lose track of. Planning is essential, as your creatures aren’t healed between fights. While pickups and items can be used to heal for small amounts, it is sometimes best to stack up on armor or have just a single Montabi tank the damage so you strike back hard against these bosses. The bosses are true tests of your skill and I liked their use of different mechanics. Whether they simply boost themselves to deal massive damage if you leave them unattended, or they are all about supporting their own Montabi to create an attack on two fronts.

One of my problems with most Roguelikes/Roguelites is that boss encounters in particular can feel cheap: a critical hit there, an unavoidable pattern that you haven’t encountered before or even dying just before landing your final blow. It makes the genre so susceptible to ‘ragequit’ and is one of the reasons why I’ve lost my appetite for games that look cool, but turn out to adhere to the Roguelike template. Yet, Montabi is a delicate balancing act. All the information, at any time, is there on screen for you to react to. Frankly, there were times where I almost gave up during an elite or a boss encounter, because they seemed so overpowered. Yet, just keeping my strategy going, focusing on dodging the right attacks and slowly chipping away at their defenses got me through these ‘impossible’ encounters. That’s pretty impressive game design, especially from a debut studio.

That being said, as much as I adore the gameplay, the worldbuilding and design of Montabi left me unimpressed. It is so hard to play with these particular tropes and not have the final result be compared to Pokémon. I think it is a trap that indie teams looking to make their own take on Pokémon often fall into. The secret of why Pokémon works so well, is that you as a trainer get attached to your creature because you also spend time with them outside of battle. Montabi leaves very little room for this. It implies this city lives in harmony with these creatures, but all of this is communicated through text and background details. I had no moment where I considered my Taxi-cab bug to be anything other than a good armor-stack deck. It would've been more fun if the way I used my Montabi had them develop little personality traits. I do like that there’s a lot of creative designs to the human characters and a real inclusivity to the world. But the story and world end up becoming mostly background noise. That goes too for the soundtrack, which becomes fairly repetitive, making me want to put on my own soundtrack or a video in the background instead.

Still, Montabi was a delightful surprise. When I realized I had to deal with another roguelike deckbuilder, my heart sank. Thankfully its strong game design and strategic approach to the genre kept me coming back again and again. I think that this game lays out a strong foundation to improve upon, especially in giving its titular creatures a more defined personality and broadening the tactical synergies between them. The story, music and characters aren’t anything to write home about. Yet in the end I still had a pretty great time with Montabi. Its gameplay loop feels like the right fit for a Roguelike game. While I still stand by the fact that I’m over these types of games, Montabi deserves its spot among some of the best this genre has to offer.

[Breaking A Game Made Me Fall in Love With It All Over Again]

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TalkBack / How I Learned To Start Randomzing and Love Ocarina of Time

« on: July 27, 2026, 05:05:00 AM »

Breaking A Game Made Me Fall in Love With It All Over Again

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/editorial/76545/how-i-learned-to-start-randomzing-and-love-ocarina-of-time

Ask me on the right day and I may tell you that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is my favorite game of all time. While I wasn’t there when it launched on N64 and revolutionized games, I wasn’t that far behind. I’ve often told the story of how I received a Nintendo GameCube from my parents on Christmas, possibly in November 2004. It was the Mario Kart: Double Dash!! And The Legend of Zelda: Collector’s Edition combo-pack, which included the famed game we’re talking about today. In part, one of the reasons I learned English at a young age was because I had to translate an English strategy guide to finish the game–that and getting over my fear of ReDeads underneath Kakariko Graveyard. My love for games and the world of Hyrule have been intertwined ever since the day I first saw Link riding Epona through a moonlit Hyrule field on that opening screen.

Since then I’ve returned to this iteration of Hyrule countless times, primarily through the many official rereleases that Nintendo has been eager to provide us with. Sometimes I’d take my time and explore a bit more of the world but doing a full 100% completionist run has been rare even for me. I’ve beaten the game more times than I can count, yet it wasn’t until a few years ago that I truly put in the time to get to know Ocarina of Time. And in a way that Nintendo themselves had never considered. I discovered the randomizer.

For many, this isn’t a new concept. A randomizer refers to a modified version of a game in which the items, locations and interactions that you as a player need to progress have been swapped around. Zelda has the most clear cut examples of a randomizer you can think of. Treasure chests have had their contents swapped; where you may originally have found five rupees in one of the houses in Kokiri forest, now you may stumble upon the Hookshot at the very beginning of the game. Basically how this works is that every object in the game is indexed to be a certain type of ‘lock’ that requires a ‘key’ from the player to access. Take, for example, the eye-switches, which can open doors when shot with your slingshot or bow and arrow. However, in a randomizer you often have to rely on different techniques or routes to find your slingshot. In its most vanilla form, you will still play the game from beginning to end, but may have some keys and items swapped around within their own dungeons. But the true fun for me began when I enabled ‘skullsanity’ and several other toggles in one of my first randomized runs. Swapping any and all items in the itempool with the possibility of also being held by the golden skulltulas.

As you can imagine, this changes your approach for finishing Ocarina of Time drastically. You need to run around across Hyrule field like a maniac trying to find any and all chests and ways to proceed. The density of these modes is crazy. Randomizers may include brand new items, such as having to find the individual directional buttons on the Ocarina itself (meaning you cannot play certain songs) or even putting the action buttons themselves in the movepool (good luck beating the Shadow temple with only two C-items). This isn’t as awful as you may think. Knowing every single detail in Ocarina of Time would require brainspace that most of us do not have. Therefore most randomizers have an automatic checklist included. When entering a certain area, you may get an indication of what items could be found there; this is helpful when you find a skulltula and cannot reach its item drop until you find the boomerang fifteen hours later.

But this piece isn’t necessarily about randomizers themselves. They’ve been around for far longer than Ocarina of Time and span a wide variety of games. What I want to talk about is how the Ocarina of Time randomizer made me fall in love with this version of Hyrule all over again. While A Link to the Past, and even the original Legend of Zelda, had a pretty massive open world, Hyrule in Ocarina of Time is pretty distinctive, in part, sold by that grand sense of adventure. Being able to go into any direction in a 3D environment still feels exciting 28 years later. While the plot beats are pretty universal, going from Kokiri Forest to Death Mountain to Zora’s Domain etc., there are so many interactions in between saving Hyrule and figuring out the dungeons that often get overlooked.

The fandom in particular has latched onto Majora’s Mask over the past decade or so. I don’t blame them, Majora’s Mask has some of the finest character work and writing in the entire Zelda series. But thanks to my experience with those randomizers, I finally had to take my time to truly explore every nook and cranny of Hyrule. Speaking with every NPC and learning that their side-stories and schedules, while perhaps not as impactful as those in Termina, still contributed to that feeling of adventure. I never realized that Talon gets tossed out into a random house in Kakariko Village after Ganondorf takes over. I always assumed he had been imprisoned somewhere. Or how about the side-alley in Hyrule Castle Town? There’s even a shop there that sells Bombchus at night. In a regular run of the game, you have almost nothing to gain there, but in a randomizer this could be an essential shopkeeper. What if now the rich lady gives you an important item when returning her dog?

You may think me crazy for never having noticed these interactions, but I think that is truly the magic of Zelda games. All these little elements that the game does not tell you about, but reinforce the idea that this is a living world. Even better, you may have only known about these details because some friend at school showed them to you. It calls to mind that lost ‘playground rumor’ effect that, for many, had faded away from the series till Breath of the Wild came along. Yet in these randomized runs, it is almost virtually impossible to reach Ganon’s castle without this knowledge. Whether you learn it from keeping track with the checklist or you have to resort to a guide, these moments are still there waiting for you all these decades later.

And for me, the randomizer and this requisite knowledge reignited my love for Ocarina of Time. I was taking moments to appreciate and love its world even more. Whether it was seeing that sun going down waiting for a Gold Skulltula to spawn in, or talking with shopkeepers I never had to visit before in order to purchase an item for a trading quest or to open up a new pathway. And if it wasn’t that, the randomizer made encounters with required characters surprisingly tense. Would King Zora provide me with something useful after scooting over for 30 seconds? Was the reward for retrieving the chickens in Kakariko worth it? And not to mention those 100 hidden Golden Skulltulas themselves. Learning where they were all hiding out and even how to lure some of them from their buried hiding places was something I never had done before. It made this world feel that much more cohesive even with everything feeling out of place.

While it would be a dream come true if Nintendo were to implement something of a randomizer in their upcoming Ocarina of Time Remake, I think the extent of what Nintendo is willing to change up can be found in the Master Quest. Within the constraint of its dungeons, that flexibility feels appropriate for the conservative nature of the company. Frankly, the efforts with projects like Ship of Harkonian, the name given to the recompiled version of Ocarina of Time that enabled porting the game PC and other devices, have already done wonders for the randomizer community. The tweaks and settings for generating your own randomized seed, as well as quality of life changes to the overall Ocarina of Time gameplay and mods make it the easiest way to return to Hyrule again and again. It is especially a pleasure on Steam Deck or using portable emulated methods given the flexibility of Ship of Harkonian.

But even if Nintendo gives us about as faithful a remake as the new Ocarina of Time can be, it will still be a joy for me to revisit this world again in its ‘pure’ form. Deploying the knowledge, tricks and skills I’ve developed on my many randomized adventures is something that I am incredibly excited about. Perhaps there may even be changes or additions that will inspire future randomizers.

Ocarina of Time is perhaps no longer ‘the greatest game of all time’. But as I’ve explored this version of Hyrule again and again throughout my life, its importance has grown alongside me. Exploring Hyrule for the very first time while translating strategy guides; defeating Ganon after, literal, years alongside my best friend; returning to Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo Wii with virtual console and seeing the flaws as an angsty teenager; bringing the game with me everywhere I went on my 3DS and trying to understand why it had lingered in my mind for so long: all of these led up to a memorable new opportunity. This was challenging myself by trying to finish my first randomized run and encountering new tales hidden all across Hyrule as a grown adult while indulging in that sweet nostalgia. And now, as a new iteration comes out in 2026, I’m growing as a person with all these different worldviews and experiences. Ocarina of Time has always been there for me and many others. It is like Sheik says to a lost and confused Link on a quest to save his world:

“It is something that grows over time. A true friendship. A feeling in the heart that becomes even stronger over time. The passion of friendship will soon blossom into a righteous power and through it, you will know which way to go.”

Ocarina of Time, my old friend, I cannot wait to see where we will go next.

[Ain’t No Namco Big Enough To Keep Me From Playing Suica Game]

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TalkBack / NAMCO LEGENDARY Mountains (Switch 2) Review Mini

« on: July 07, 2026, 03:00:00 AM »

Ain’t No Namco Big Enough To Keep Me From Playing Suica Game

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/76338/namco-legendary-mountains-switch-2-review-mini

We’re long past the peak of Suica game. The mobile title that took the world by storm a few years back didn’t manage to retain its pop culture relevance beyond a few weeks. So obviously, Namco, famous for capitalizing on its own pop culture relevance, is giving it another shot with NAMCO LEGENDARY Mountains. With a voxel-aesthetic and a few small tweaks, this is an easy pick-up-and-play puzzle game whether you’re familiar with Namco characters or not.

Each stage is presented as a small bowl. In a loop around the gameplay area, you can toss in orbs containing different voxel characters of classic Namco series. DigDug, Pac-Man, Mappy and Xevious are all present. On top of the screen, there’s a reference to see which orbs need to collide in order to grow into the next phase. Your goal is to keep evolving your orbs to even bigger sizes and avoid them tumbling over the edge. While you can rotate and slightly adjust your angle, I was often struggling with the fact that the camera was locked to the horizontal axis. While there is an indicator for the arc of your throw, it is hard to judge where exactly your orb will land, causing me to lose a good run more often than not. While the Namco aesthetic is pretty fun, it did get a bit too repetitive for me after a while. Depending on the stage, your music and character-roster changes around. In Pac-Man you’ll have to endure the main Pac-Man theme for possibly tens of minutes as you stack up the fruits and ghosts. I do think it is fun that as you keep playing more stages are unlocked, and in particular that you unlock new voxel versions of Namco characters. You can even change the evolution tree to your liking. Want to only have DigDug enemies that slowly blow up? You can manually adjust these as you please. There’s even a little diorama mode to showcase the voxel in a scene, which is cute but nothing too exciting.

Overall NAMCO LEGENDARY Mountains is a neat twist on the Suica game formula. But the presentation is a bit of a mess. Menus are simple, the voxel characters are pretty static and the music gets repetitive fast. However, I cannot deny that I was hooked by the gameplay. Booting it up during short breaks or to have something to play casually while listening to a podcast was fun. It tickles my brain just enough to stay engaged while also being able to zone out for a bit. That does, however, apply to pretty much all Suica-like games. The choice for voxels is a bit of a double edged sword, given the limited field of view and input. Still if you dig a retro feel and some casual gameplay, NAMCO LEGENDARY Mountains is an easy hill to recommend and return to more often than you may expect.

[Periscope Down, Mystery Up!]

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TalkBack / The Mermaid Mask (Switch 2) Review

« on: July 17, 2026, 07:00:00 AM »

Periscope Down, Mystery Up!

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/76427/the-mermaid-mask-switch-2-review

The best thing about indie games is that you can often sense when developers are inspired by other games to make something they truly love. SFB Games have been on a roll over the past decade or so with Snipperclips and Crow Country. But I truly fell in love with their work when I played the 3rd installment of their Detective Grimoire series, Tangle Tower. Now, Detective Grimoire and Sally are back in The Mermaid Mask. This detective is everything mystery, puzzle and narrative fans could hope for. A tightly woven story with some absolutely gorgeous visuals, this is one you shouldn’t overlook.

Waking up in the abandoned Stonetop Inn, Detective Grimoire and Sally are called in by the captain of a mysterious submarine called the Mortuga Submarine, which has recently turned into a crime scene for the murder of its previous captain, Magnus Mortuga. It is the detectives’ job to hunt for clues, interview all the suspects and discover the secrets aboard the submarine. All the while, an ominous feeling hangs in the air, given the eclectic nature of its inhabitants.

The visuals are immediately striking, retaining the gorgeous palette and animation style from the previous game, but updating it in subtle ways. It’s endearing to notice the manner in which the nervous writer J.D. Wirman hunches over as he polishes his glasses, the joyful motions of the strange salesman Mr. Gripp and the slow and imposing figure of Dr. Zephyr. Each character is performed astonishingly well: from the little intonations to the way these characters feel like fully realized people. All the dialogue is voiced and it never ceased to amaze me. The way in which Grimoire and Sally react to objects around the submarine and their little jokes are especially funny. That goes doubly so for the writing overall, perfectly nailing the tone, character and mannerisms of everyone you come across on the adventure. So much so that by the end I secretly didn’t even want to figure out who the culprit was, because I was so endeared to everyone on board. And yet even then the game manages to beautifully subvert expectations.

Structurally, I also found the locations to be a lot more fun to explore. While the submarine isn’t as large as the Tangle Tower, the way in which its rooms are interconnected is easy to keep track of. The game also has a great hint system, which is always optional but doesn’t spoil the required clue immediately. Each location hides several items and objects you can present to the crew of the Mortuga submarine. Their responses are noted alongside the clues so you can easily refer to vital evidence for your investigation. Often clues are used in multiple ways and unlock new items or information. I never found them to be too strained or tedious to put together. Only once did I fall into the trap of having to present every item in my inventory to proceed in the investigation. Even then, I probably could’ve figured it out with all the information the game provides you with.

In between finding the items, you will have to solve little puzzles. These are all different in design from one another. Some see you positioning pieces on a board; others want you to twist and turn dials to recreate patterns and even others are about sharp observation. Presenting the solution is easy and if you do not figure it out, a remark from Sally may point you in the right direction. It’s the perfect amount of puzzles to break up the exploration and the narrative to satisfy the reward of being able to proceed with a new clue in hand. It’s at this moment that I realized every character and room had their own musical theme, which are all fantastic as well.

The Mermaid Mask’s parts all add up to this wonderful narrative with its own identity and a cast of characters that I loved to spend time with. While the ending could’ve been a bit more involved for my taste, I did like that it left me with a bittersweet feeling. That’s not something every mystery game is able to pull off, but it felt right for this particular tale. It adds to the strength of these characters that I felt satisfied leaving them in this particular place, even though I wanted to see more of them. I think that’s the mark of great writing: something that is thought provoking and allows you for a moment to inhabit a character or view the world through a different lens.  It is so hard to weave a compelling mystery adventure but SFB Games have simply struck gold with this fourth Detective Grimoire adventure. The passion for their work oozes from the game and I think it is impossible to not love all of these characters. Frankly I cannot wait to see them return to the world of Detective Grimoire. But until then, The Mermaid Mask is a must for anyone looking to dive into the weekend with an engrossing mystery experience.

[Seaking for More Adventures?]

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TalkBack / Pokopia Gets Expansion Pass and a Free Update

« on: June 09, 2026, 07:27:42 AM »

Seaking for More Adventures?

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/75965/pokopia-gets-expansion-pass-and-a-free-update

Nintendo and Koei Tecmo confirmed today that the smash hit Pokopia will be getting several updates with both free and paid downloadable content. In the first free update you gain access to the move dive, which allows you to explore undersea habitats and expand the towns underwater. The free update will be available in August.

Alongside this free update a paid Expansion Pass was announced, consisting of three parts. The first party, Bubbly Basin has an underwater town to explore with new pokémon such as Popplio, Corphish and Mudkip. New furniture and structures will also be available. To access this DLC you will need to learn the move dive and have completed the request 'Raise the Environment level!' inthe Bleak Beach region of the game. The Expansion pass will have two future parts. The second part will include additional new features and is scheduled for late 2026. The third part has an additional new town and will be available sometime in 2027. Finally the trailer teased the appearance of the Mythical Pokémon Manaphy. The Pokémon Pokopia Expansion pass can be pre-ordered today from the Nintendo eShop. The DLC cannot be purchased seperately. If you purchase the Expansion pass you will also get access to the Dynamic Ditto print recipe at the workbench and claim 30 pieces of Rare Pokémetal. This code can be claimed till August 31st 2027 and redeemed till September 30th 2027.

[My Kingdom Has Come]

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TalkBack / Kingdom Hearts I-III Collection & Kingdom Hearts IV Coming to Nintendo Switch 2

« on: June 09, 2026, 07:18:00 AM »

My Kingdom Has Come

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/75963/kingdom-hearts-i-iii-collection-n-kingdom-hearts-iv-coming-to-nintendo-switch-2

During today's Nintendo Direct, Square-Enix confirmed that all previously released Kingdom Hearts games will be coming to Nintendo Switch 2 as native ports. Spread across three collections, dubbed Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III] contains Kingdom Hearts 1.5+2.5 Final Remix, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue and Kingdom Hearts III + Re:Mind. You can purchase these collections separately through the Nintendo eShop and the games will be released on October 8th 2026.

In a surpising twist it was also announced that Kingdom Hearts IV will launch on Nintendo Switch 2 alongside the other console versions of the game. Kingdom Hearts IV was revealed back in April 2022. Since then no news on the game was announced. The trailer today showcased new footage of the game. Including combat segments and some returning familiar faces from the Kingdom Hearts universe. No date was announced.

[Nostalgia is truly a vibe these days]

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TalkBack / Mixtape (Switch 2) Review

« on: May 21, 2026, 05:25:52 AM »

Nostalgia is truly a vibe these days

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/75638/mixtape-switch-2-review

I binged Mixtape in a single night. That is not necessarily uncommon for me to do with shorter games. But in some sense, it feels like the perfect way to experience Mixtape. A hazy collection of vibes, strung together by a pretty fantastic, licensed soundtrack and some wonderful performances. Yet, by the next morning I wasn't quite sure how to feel about Mixtape. I adore narrative adventure games but Mixtape revels in its own nostalgia so much that without that particular context the game rings quite hollow. Much like the adolescents at the heart of its story, it could’ve done with a little more growing up.

Mixtape is the latest title from Beethoven and Dinosaur, best known for their previous artistic endeavor ‘The Artful Escape”. In Mixtape you play as Stacey Rockford, a rebellious teenager who has her mind set on becoming a Music Supervisor. Given her gift of always knowing what song to put on for the ideal mood. In order to pursue this dream, she will be leaving for New York the very next day. Much to the dismay of her best friends Van and Cassandra. Planning to make this last day memorable, the group sets out to find a stash of booze for one hell of a party. Along the way plenty of drama and backstory shows how the three became friends and what may become of the group after Stacey’s departure.

The game plays out like a series of short vignettes as Stacey and her crew explore the town of Blue Moon Lagoon. Perhaps the most idyllic embodiment of an American suburb. Where everyone knows everyone and the teenagers are awaiting their time to leave for college. One scene you’re skating down a hill on your skateboard, avoiding oncoming traffic. The next you’re reminiscing about the past in a hazy dream-like sequence. Trying to reach an abandoned cabin that Stacey’s sister left clues for, while darting and floating through the open fields in the woods. Each scene is accompanied by a music track picked by and introduced by Stacy. The Smashing Pumpkins, Roxy Music, Iggy Pop, and even Stan Bush’s The Touch (Yes, from the Transformers animated movie) make an appearance. But also, the lesser-known songs fit the scenes extremely well. This particular playlist in context with the game is well worth the price of admission alone. The cherry on top is that because of its stylized animation and visuals, the game ran great for me on Nintendo Switch 2. Even with the occasional loading screen between chapters.

The characters themselves take a while to warm up to but once I began to understand their relationship they struck a chord with me. Stacey and Van are already pretty notorious in Blue Moon Lagoon and Cassandra as a relatively new member of the group is out to rebel against everything that resembles her strict parents. The performances by Bella DeLong, Max Korman, and Jessica Ma are wonderful. With the perfect balance of 90’s slang and accompanying grunts that fit their personalities perfectly. Tied together with some great banter, it is truly the beating heart of the game.

However, I do think the Mixtape is also pretty limited by its particular flavor of nostalgia. As a European, the idea of American suburbs and rebellious teens is pretty different from my own upbringing. In a sense the scenes feel like every American movie and television trope rolled up into one. It is especially striking given that Beethoven & Dinosaur themselves are an Australian development company. I cannot help but feel that Mixtape wants to portray this idea of nostalgia and a longing for better, unburdened days but it is almost like it is made of cardboard. Much like nostalgia itself, the game is fleeting. Memories are reshaped and reconstructed every time you think about them. Of course, no game can play to everyone’s nostalgia, but by positioning it so strictly in a place and setting we’ve mostly experienced through American media it feels like a repeat of someone’s greatest hits. While listening to some band's actual greatest hits.

All this is to say that while playing Mixtape I was mesmerized by its world and characters, but the very next morning I am struggling to think of what I actually experienced. As easy as the comparison is to something like Life is Strange or perhaps even Sayonara Wild Hearts those games definitely had something to say of their own. In the end I’m left with a pretty great playlist that reminds me of those past moments, yet it rings hollow. It doesn’t make Mixtape a bad game, but it does make it a title that can hit very different depending on your own upbringing. And especially if that upbringing was far removed from American suburban life. Mixtape is not a bad game and for three hours you’ll most certainly be engrossed in its world and characters. It may even get you to reminisce about your adolescence. But as a game and a story I was hoping for something with a little more kick. Perhaps, much like an actual mixtape, it will get a nice place somewhere and you’ll think about it every once in a while. Going back however will probably show the cracks in the foundation that were always there.

[Platforming Pawfection]

8

TalkBack / Bubsy 4D (Switch)

« on: May 21, 2026, 05:20:00 AM »

Platforming Pawfection

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/75637/bubsy-4d-switch

I came away from gamescom last year with the stunning realization that my time playing Bubsy 4D was perhaps the most fun I had had at the show. I have no nostalgia whatsoever for the bobcat. In fact, most of what I do know about the series comes from YouTube videos and angry critics complaining about its 3D iteration. So presenting Bubsy 4D as a sort of comeback story would fit the character quite well. While Bubsy 4D is not a revolutionary platformer, its tight controls and a myriad of movement mechanics make it a joy to play.

The game does not require you to know much about Bubsy’s lore. One day, the alien enemies of Bubsy and his friends, the Woolies, come and take away the sheep from his planet. Once they return with the force of the baahbots, they steal the Golden Fleece. Reluctantly, Bubsy and his friends chase them in their spaceship as they travel across planets to recover the Golden Fleece. Everywhere, you find winks and nods to Bubsy’s past. I found it particularly funny that even the other characters barely acknowledge the relevance or role of Bubsy himself. It's a running gag that fits Bubsy’s overall disinterest in the whole affair. There isn't a grand story here, but the tone fits the vibe of wacky 3D platformers of the 1990s and early 2000s. If you ask me, it's all just a good excuse to present you with some fun levels and platforming challenges.

What struck me immediately was the wide variety of options and moves available from the word go. If you've played Fabraz’s previous games like Demon Turf or Demon Tides, you'll probably feel right at home. The jump, the double jump and the pounce feel tight and responsive. These tools will probably help you navigate your way through the levels without issue. What makes the moveset more interesting are the glide and the hairball. The glide speaks for itself; it can give you just that little extra edge to course correct a jump or launch yourself a bit further, especially when you chain it back into a pounce or double jump. The hairball transforms Bubsy into a large ball that enables him to roll around and gain a lot of momentum. While the first levels confine you to a set track to get used to the movement, later on the ball is absolutely required to make it through time gates or complete chases. When all strung together, it becomes a cohesive platformer that makes the worlds fun to explore to their fullest. You can even purchase additional moves using blueprints you can find hidden in the levels. Want the Mario 64 backflip high jump, or the long jump? You can discover them. That little bit of customization really encourages the player to find their own preferred style.

The levels are hit or miss in terms of their effectiveness. Each planet has its own distinct visual style. While they are varied on a structural level, I did feel that they blended together after a while–on Switch, in particular, with a lower resolution that becomes pretty apparent. Every level has lots of balls of yarn to collect, which can be used to purchase costumes for Bubsy. Within the levels you will be traveling through several distinct “islands” with their own type of platforming challenges. Some may be extended parkour runways, while others have a more open feel to them. I did like this structure, but compared to a more traditional 3D platformer I did find that these sections could've used a bit more personality. From ramps to rooftops and clawing and climbing about the levels serve their technical purpose with some cute flavor that aren't the traditional forest, desert and snow areas. That having been said, with all the collectibles to find you'll be dashing through them most of the time.

Finally a word on the bosses which tended to be a bit too slow paced for my taste. In particular because Bubsy can only take three hits before being returned to the last litterbox (checkpoint) he came across. I did like the inventiveness of the bosses as their patterns and strategies do stand out. But the 'three hits to defeat the boss' becomes more of an endurance test. It is a bit at odds with how expressive the platforming itself is. That creativity you have control over as the player wavers when fighting the bosses. Granted it is only a small mark against the game, especially for a game that adheres pretty traditionally to level and world structures.

Some of my favorite indie approaches to the modern 3D platformer, such as Tinykin, Blue Fire, A Hat in Time and Demon Tides, have these movement mechanics that I never get tired of exploring. I think Bubsy 4D is a great and focused contender in the 'expressive platformer' genre. While the character will probably not suddenly capture everyone's heart, its gameplay is something I'm so happy to see more of in action. For those hungry for a new 3D platformer in the year 2026, Bubsy 4D is a great shot of nostalgic gameplay with modern tweaks and flourishes. On Switch 1, it runs fine enough, and on Switch 2 you should have no problems. If you had told me that one day Bubsy would be part of the 3D platformer renaissance I, and many others, would've laughed you out of the room. But here we are. It's Bubsy's world once more and we are just living in it.

[You can’t spell painting without pain]

9

TalkBack / Constance (Switch) Review

« on: April 29, 2026, 05:00:00 AM »

You can’t spell painting without pain

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/75401/constance-switch-review

Can you believe what an amazing streak of 2D action platformers we’ve been on for the past five years? Well, I hate to break it to your backlog, but it is time to add another one to the list. Constance sees you playing as the titular character, making her way through a gorgeous handpainted world. How you’ve exactly arrived is unclear, but in order to return back home you’ll need to find four tears scattered across the world. While the game plays with familiar themes and styles, its beautiful visual style and inventive platforming makes it a standout action-platformer.

If games like Celeste, Hollow Knight and the Ori games tickle your fancy, Constance should be right up your alley. I’d be hesitant to call it a Metroidvania, given that the game doesn’t necessarily deploy backtracking and gathering upgrades behind progression. Constance at first only arms you with your brush that can deal attacks or use paint to deploy specific abilities. This can be a dash, placing an explosive copy of yourself or stabbing enemies directly with your paintbrush. Whenever your paint is spent, you go into a vulnerable state where using paint causes damage to yourself instead. Thankfully your paint recharges slowly. But the mechanic is a neat twist to traditional combat in 2D action games where spamming your abilities doesn’t just come at the risk of running empty, but making it something you need to time very carefully.

The highlight here is the world and story. Each biome is a gorgeous and distinct setting. From a run down carnival set against a beautiful orange sunset to a library haunted by ghosts. Each frame is indeed a painting, given that most of the game uses a hand-drawn animation style. The story was surprisingly poignant albeit a bit simplistic. I love its themes on the struggle with burnout in particular in relation to the arts. Something that often gets dismissed because “you are working on something you love to do”. That gets reinforced through the gameplay. Not just because the game can be very challenging, but also because of the ‘puppet curse’ mechanic. Whenever you get a game over, you can choose to ‘persevere’. Returning you to the beginning of the room you were in, but increasing the damage done by enemies until you return to a resting spot. During challenging platforming segments it's a great balancing mechanic that doesn’t punish you for pushing you too far.

The boss battles are also very well done. Each fight feels creative and uses different mechanics to defeat the main enemy. I was in particular fond of the bosses at the aforementioned carnival, but even some of the smaller enemies have great designs that push Constance and her abilities to her limit. I will say that some of these bosses were a tad too challenging for my taste. Thankfully the accessibility options can help to modify the damage taken by both enemies and spikes. For those craving some challenge after Silksong, Constance should be a really great palette cleanser while still pushing you at times.

Overall Constance is a consistent and solid action platformer. With a gorgeous visual style and satisfying combat, I’ve had a lot of fun across the board. While the boss battles can be a major spike in difficulty, it was the perseverance-mechanic and world design that kept me coming back. It doesn’t do too many things that set it apart from the other games in the 2D action platformer genre, but that’s okay. At the end of the day this is a beautiful title that uses both its themes and mechanics to tell an important story. I do not need all my games to reinvent the wheel. Constance is another standout within this particular genre.

[Hack 'n Shoot]

10

TalkBack / PRAGMATA (Switch 2) Review

« on: April 13, 2026, 07:00:00 AM »

Hack 'n Shoot

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/75157/pragmata-switch-2-review

While Pragmata’s first trailer intrigued me,  when it was originally revealed in 2020, it did strike me as a tad generic. A guy taking care of a little girl and a sci-fi setting wasn’t something that I was lacking in my games. And I think, especially looking back at that original trailer, that Pragmata was struggling to find an identity of its own as well. Only when I played the demo a few months back could I begin to see how it was shaping up to try something original. Having now finished the full game on Nintendo Switch 2, Pragmata is a delightful surprise that I enjoyed from beginning to end. While its story will not blow your socks off, the core gameplay is satisfying and keeps you on the edge of your seat. It is Capcom embracing the return to the experimental era of the GameCube and Xbox360 but keeping its focus on singular mechanics. In short, Pragmata is excellent.

Hugh Williams is stranded on the moon after responding to a distress signal from a research lab, where he joins forces with Diana. Diana is a Pragmata, a unique experimental android that has the personality of an eight-year old but is capable of hacking and accessing systems on the Moon. The Delphi corporation has been using the moon for designing androids and all sorts of objects with Lunafilement harvested from rare resources. However, the main computer, IDUS, has gone rogue and seemingly all workers have vanished from the station. Armed robots stand in Hugh and Diana’s way as they try to find a way back to Earth and understand what has happened. At the core of the story is the relationship between Diana and Hugh. Diana as a blank canvas is curious and wants to learn more about the world around her. While Hugh is dismissive at first, he slowly begins to teach and cooperate with Diana as they form a special bond. The game takes its time to build on that foundation and there’s plenty of great character moments with the two of them–in particular when collecting Earth memorabilia for Diana to play with and having small conversations back in their shelter.

But where their connection is felt most is the gameplay. Pragmata uses a truly unique combat system where you simultaneously control Hugh and Diana. The robots are practically impervious to bullets, but Diana can hack them to open their armor, which allows Hugh to unleash a wide variety of weapons. Whenever you target an enemy, a small grid appears that uses the face buttons to guide a cube along a grid to reach the goal. If you pass through specific nodes, Diana deals additional damage or enhanced effects that will give you an edge in combat. You can use several weapons including heavy weapons like a shotgun or a long-distance laser, but there’s also supporting weapons like a riot gun to make enemies fall to the ground or a special shotgun that removes obstacles from the hacking grid. This interplay is at the heart of Pragmata and it honestly never got boring. Especially once you can upgrade your loadouts and have to face large groups of enemies, battles can be tense and overwhelming. Reloading in particular takes time, which naturally flows into you using Diana’s hacking abilities to give yourself an opening. It is such a good combat system that will require all of your attention. This is particularly true when new types of robots with different defenses or hacking grids start popping up. We’ve gotten so used to straightforward third-person shooters, but Pragmata tickles my enjoyment of puzzle games just enough for me to never feel like I’m playing on autopilot.

The art direction also deserves special attention. The research stations on the moon are incredibly varied: from a biome filled with replicated trees and nature, to dashing across the lunar surface while trying to avoid touching the ground as it draws attention from enemies. A lot of care and effort went into establishing the world of Pragmata. Logs explaining what the researchers have been up to and their frustrations about corporate control and the reliance on AI feel particularly apt in 2026. There’s of course some science-fiction leaps of logic around, but overall they help to set Pragmata apart, especially when the static white corridors make way for glitched out lunafilament fabricators that have gone berserk. The level design is fairly linear, but there are a lot of optional rooms and collectibles that will test your skill in combat as well as perception. I’d be remiss to not mention the excellent boss battles as well, which are spectacular in both size and scope, but also in the way they all have varied techniques that you’ll need to deal with in both the hacking and the shooting.

On Switch 2 the experience is pleasant enough. Visuals absolutely have taken a hit, rendering most of the game in a lower resolution with the exception of the HUD elements. Forgoing the crisp look from other versions to focus on a steady gameplay experience works most of the time. By the end of the game, I definitely experienced a lot of frame drops, in particular when using the scan ability to find missing collectibles. Yet, it was never so bad as to keep me from playing the game. It looks much better in docked than handheld, but given the easy pick-up-and-play nature of Pragmata I was never too bummed to switch from the TV to handheld mode. There’s little in terms of settings and tweaks to prefer visuals over framerate, but in all honesty the game feels at its best when you’re managing both the combat and hacking grid with a steady framerate. If you truly want to experience the best visuals, Switch 2 isn’t the platform for you. However for Nintendo-only fans this is some great optimization by Capcom on par with their recent work on the Resident Evil games.

Pragmata is like a return to a different era of AAA game development–something like Vanquish, Õkami, or Mirror’s Edge, games that really didn’t require sequels but had their focus on a sole aesthetic and core gameplay loop. Games that didn’t throw a hundred things at the wall to see what would stick. Pragmata is so refreshing in that sense. It has some phenomenal set pieces and boss battles that have lingered in my mind for the past week. While the overall story fell a bit flat for me personally, I had so much fun spending time with both Hugh and Diana. It made me go back to check out some of the postgame content. I hope that Pragmata becomes a path forward for Capcom. While they have been going back to the well and redefining a lot of their long-running series, it makes sense that Pragmata stands on its own. It is a fresh idea honed to near perfection and I would love to see what else this team can do. Whether you’re playing on Switch 2 or any other system, Pragmata is a great time.

[The meat is tasty, even if a bit overdone]

11

TalkBack / Super Meat Boy 3D (Switch 2) Review

« on: March 30, 2026, 07:00:00 AM »

The meat is tasty, even if a bit overdone

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/74949/super-meat-boy-3d-switch-2-review

Super Meat Boy, but in 3D. It’s rare that a pitch can pretty much cover an entire review, but in every sense of the word that’s what you get here. Super Meat Boy 3D is a loving reinterpretation of one of the most notable indie games of all time. Prepare to feel ancient as I write that the original Super Meat Boy released sixteen years ago. For me, it was one of the first indie games I ever bought. I begged my parents for their credit card to buy the game on this strange website called ‘Steam’ so that I could play it on my small laptop that was only meant for school work. Now, almost an entire adulthood later, the meat is still alluring, but with this transition I do think some of the magic has been lost of what makes Super Meat Boy an all-time platformer.

The game doesn’t leave you hanging for long. The opening cinematic features an almost upsettingly detailed Meat Boy chasing after Dr. Fetus to rescue his girlfriend Bandage Girl. The world is incredibly colorful with plenty of details that blend into the background–little beavers running away from the robots Dr. Fetus deploys to cut down the forest, strange tall-legged creatures rummaging through toxic waste. It all helps to bring the world of Meat Boy to life in ways the original could only dream off. The core gameplay is still the same: as a cube of meat, you try to reach the end of the level. These levels are still punishingly difficult. From buzzsaws attached to every surface, exploding mines, lasers and pretty much anything that moves: all of these are out to kill Meat Boy.

If you know anything about the original, it is the tight control of Meat Boy. He’s both squishy in ways that a cube of meat would feel, but also able to perfectly cling to walls and slip around in his trail of meat juice. The good news is that this has almost perfectly been translated into 3D. Almost instantly I was transported back to 2010 and could feel that tight control, whether that is wall jumping to reach higher points, running across walls to avoid pits and simply the way in which you jump. That is all perfectly preserved and will be the main draw to keep you engaged. Meat Boy has also gotten a few new tricks up his sleeve. Most notable is the addition of a mid-jump dash that can give you quite a bit of speed and travel some distance. This is your tool to beat the devilishly difficult time goals and get ‘A+’ rankings. It is also a mechanic that fits the new design of the levels. You’re looking not just for ways to make it past obstacles, but discovering pathways and shortcuts that combine the wall run and dash to shave off precious seconds or find secret collectibles. I wish that the game could let me change the controls in the options. Using A to jump and X to dash really went against my platforming preferences. Especially with a reset button mapped to Y on the Switch controller.

However, this new mechanic is where Super Meat Boy 3D slips up. It is a combination of two very specific elements that ultimately made the experience more of a drag, most notably is the level design. While the original Meat Boy was pretty simplistic in its levels, here it feels like almost immediately new obstacle types are introduced. They might be as simple as robots cutting down parts of the level or branching paths, but they end up making the levels feel quite cluttered.There is a lot of open space to travel through but it ends up feeling like you’re on top of a miniature rollercoaster a lot of the time. The backgrounds and those aforementioned details in the stages become distracting and even dangerous as you work your way through longer and longer levels. The number of times I died on a pretty good attempt because some environmental acid was dripping from a background pipe I wasn’t interacting with became pretty frustrating. It feels unfair in a way that Super Meat Boy was always careful to avoid. Of course, this game is catering to an audience looking for an intense and difficult platformer. They certainly achieved that, but at times it feels like that recipe has been overdone.

My second main issue with the game is the stationary camera. Navigating a 3D platformer really depends on the camera and I feel that here Super Meat Boy 3D is adhering too closely to the original game. There are levels where this works perfectly, with the camera positioned at a distance, but straight behind Meat Boy. It helps the player to make decisions on the fly based on your jumps and dashes as you can see the level layout ahead of you. But then there are levels where the camera is slightly rotated to accommodate the level design and it breaks the flow and control of Meat Boy almost immediately. Instead of running straight ahead, you’ll now need to begin to run in a diagonal direction to not bump straight into a wall of spikes. It is difficult to grasp where Meat Boy will land. You will overshoot your jumps or jump from a wall into nothingness because you cannot reposition the camera. No joke, I wish this game would be playable on the 3DS in actual ‘3D’. It would be much easier to accurately judge the position of Meat Boy within his environment.

It is these elements that kept me from enjoying Super Meat Boy 3D as much as I’d like. Yes, it is still a fun platformer. But it is also the modern embodiment of why ‘just make it 3D’ is still as challenging today as it was back on the Nintendo 64. At times, Super Meat Boy 3D gets to do its own thing and focus on what made that original game a modern classic. Great controls with tight level design that encourage the player to replay it over and over again to get the best time and find the collectibles. Yet, too many times I felt like the meat was left cooking too long. It’s bent into very specific ways to adhere to that original game, instead of standing on its own two meaty legs.

[A blueprint for the future of puzzle games]

12

TalkBack / Blue Prince (Switch 2) Review

« on: March 17, 2026, 05:00:00 AM »

A blueprint for the future of puzzle games

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/74755/blue-prince-switch-2-review

Let me get this out of the way first. I am very happy that I waited to play Blue Prince until it came to the Nintendo Switch 2. One of the most renowned games from last year, Blue Prince is a game I didn’t know much about except for its structure and how it had the ability to quickly overtake a player’s life. So having it available on a system I could take with me and suspend at any time was a prerequisite. And let me be clear: Blue Prince absolutely deserves its accolades. This is a phenomenal puzzle game that will fester in your brain like a virus, unlocking key puzzles hours after you first encounter them. Blue Prince sits at the intersection of playing a game on a screen and playing a game in your mind. I cannot recommend it enough for those who love to sink their teeth into an escape room, mystery box or puzzle book. Even if it may end up overtaking any free hours you still have left at the end of the day.

After the passing of Baron Sinclair, you play as Simon, his chosen successor. His inheritance, the Mount Holly Estate and associated titles, will be yours if you can reach the mysterious 46th room of the manor. Given that there are only 45 rooms and that the layout of the house changes every day, this is a task easier said than done. Every in-game day you begin at the manor entrance and will need to open doors, draft rooms and manage your limited resources in order to figure out how to find, reach and access the 46th room. Each room is a puzzle in its own right and the game does not waste time by recommending you keep a physical notebook in order to track clues and puzzles. By the end, my notebook was almost twenty pages of scribbles, doodles and charts.

As you may have guessed, this is where the roguelike structure comes into play. Each time you open a door, you can pick from three different rooms with different connecting doors. While certain rooms are more likely to appear in certain places of the manor in a sense every door is you rolling the dice and hoping for a room that can be beneficial. A room may contain resources such as gems, which can be spent to draw rooms with additional doors or benefits. But rooms also have designated colors that indicate their type. For example, red rooms tend to have detrimental effects on your draft for the remainder of the day. Given that every room has its own layout and connecting paths, nothing is more important than keeping an eye on your resources so that you can open or access rooms in such a way that you can keep moving forward. Whether that is actively going north and reaching the Antechamber at the far end of the manor, or focusing in on a specific puzzle or key that can help you understand the manor’s layout better.

I think games are at their best when you as a player are making choices. Much like characters in films, choices are what define us. In play, a choice is what reinforces your connection to the rules of the game. Kicking a ball at a specific time during soccer has an effect on how the other participants of the game will react. The masterstroke of Blue Prince is that each choice is clearly communicated beforehand, and you as a player are forced to weigh each and every door as a choice because once you ‘unlock’ a door, you have to add a room. The game is randomized, but always determined by the player’s choice. It is subtle but key to figuring out how to navigate Mount Holly’s endless hallways and rooms. In the end that is the actual game playing out on the screen in front of you: choices and what they mean for the way in which you play the game. The thing with Blue Prince is that this is in a sense only half of the game.

Onions, as you are most definitely aware, have layers. Blue Prince is an onion, wrapped in boxes at the center of a labyrinth in an escape room. The sheer amount of things you can learn about the world the game takes place in–through the objects, letters, notes, art and much more spread throughout the drafting pool of rooms–is astonishing. Whether that is the Sinclair family tree and the inhabitants of Mount Holly, or learning more about the history of the Reddington estate. I’m fairly confident in saying that every possible room in Blue Prince contributes to this overall feeling of laying out a corkboard with red string. It can be unbelievably satisfying once you get the feeling of cracking a clue as to how to proceed. Whether that is a hidden password or code or simply understanding what a person’s relationship is to someone based on photos or notes scattered around. It may take tens of hours to suddenly realize what a machine is used for or how to interpret a cryptic message. This is the true heart of Blue Prince that will keep puzzleheads enthralled for many hours.

But I would be remiss to not mention that Blue Prince can also feel like a repetitive mess with this particular roguelike structure. Running into consecutive dead-ends, especially when you as a player have already figured out what to do next can be demoralizing. I don’t think that Blue Prince can have its cake and eat it too all the time. There are plenty of strategies one can deploy to figure out an optimal route. Only to be cut off by a no-win solution before the very end. In fact the only reason I was able to reach the end of the game, was by overpreparing for any eventuality and it still wound up being a matter of chance to reach the final destination. By that point, I had not yet solved every clue or connected every dot to one of its many other mysteries. I think that’s a flaw in Blue Prince’s design. I understand how its creators do not want to hand players the solution on a platter. But upon reaching the credits, I felt satisfied enough to not continue unraveling the layers it uses to hide its story behind. I can absolutely understand how that feels to certain players. Reaching that final conclusion will require determination, perseverance but also a lot of luck. This is where the game is at odds with itself. It is why in the end I still prefer a title like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, which plays around with a similar design intent. But as it is a puzzle game with a set number of solutions, Lorelei allows its world and characters to grow alongside the player’s understanding of the world. Conversely, Blue Prince can often be a fight against the design of the game itself.

That having been said, even if you do not enjoy the roguelike genre, Blue Prince is still an absolutely astonishing achievement. At its heart it is a puzzle game unlike any other. You aren’t simply solving puzzles, but actively making choices and feeling their impact reverberate on the experience. The warning signs were there and they are true. Blue Prince can take over your life if you don’t watch out. But I say let it. Step into this manor over and over again. Get swept up in the mysteries of the Sinclair family and keep pushing forward. Whether you will stay long after the credits have rolled is ultimately up to you. But I can guarantee you that this is truly a unique game in every sense of the word. It will be the benchmark that future puzzle games will be measured against and that’s no small feat.

[When mystery and mythology complement each other perfectly]

13

TalkBack / PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid's Curse (Switch) Review

« on: February 17, 2026, 01:00:00 AM »

When mystery and mythology complement each other perfectly

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/74324/paranormasight-the-mermaids-curse-switch-review

I missed out on the original PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, which released back in 2023. But as it goes, sometimes it takes a standalone sequel to discover something you’ve probably overlooked. Case and point, PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid’s Curse is a wonderful adventure game that takes the familiar tropes of the visual novel and gives it plenty of unique twists of its own. Part horror, part mystery, and yes even part romance, The Mermaid’s Curse made me an avid reader in a way that books wish they could.

The story begins shortly after Yuna Minakuchi, a teenager growing up in 1980’s Japan, returns to his hometown on the island of Kameshima. He’s shunned by the village as most people believe his mother to be responsible for a terrible disaster that befell the island five years ago. Undeterred, Yuna sets out alongside his best friends Azami and Tsukasa to become a pearl diver. During one of his dives however, Yuna comes across another horrific version of himself that reaches out to him from the depths. Waking up in shock on the boat, Azami informs him about the legends of mermaids that have been passed down across Ise bay throughout the centuries. As the first of many paranormal events happening on Kameshima, it is up to you to figure out what is going on with the curse of the mermaids, help Yuna figure out what happened to his mother and how to save the island. At the same time, other mysterious people travel to Kameshima to investigate a series of mysterious deaths that seem to be related to mermaids as well.

That is about as far as I dare to go with a basic story synopsis for the game. Needless to say that there are plenty of twists and turns that happen during the story. When I saw the first trailer and a ‘story chart’ I was kind of put off initially. I rarely like it when stories force me to return to earlier parts and influence a story in specific ways to get a proper ending. But the way The Mermaid’s Curse handles this is both elegant and natural once you get into the proper structure of the game. Using both flashbacks and clearly telegraphed branching storylines with different characters, I found the experience more a breeze than a struggle. Especially since the majority of the time you will most likely be doing a lot of reading.

What I really like about the game is that it fully embraces its Japanese identity. You may be familiar with mermaids as a creature of folklore, but the way in which PARANORMASIGHT slowly unravels both the historical accounts, fictional histories, and real-world events is quite elegant. I adore it when stories use their local settings in order to approach a well known topic from a different perspective and here it is done masterfully. Occasionally you will be required to delve into the ‘optional’ histories and extended stories to fully understand what is going on, but the game uses both colored text, clearly updated profiles and the aforementioned story chart to make this as smooth as possible.

As with any good story, this would fall or stand depending on the characters and I’m happy to say that this is a very fun cast. Even side characters you will brush aside early on, turn out to have a lot more to do with the mysteries you’re investigating. In its concluding chapters it felt like I had cracked the pinboard with all the interconnected relationships and connections between characters, which felt very satisfying. This is also where some of the more meta aspects from the story shine. Some of these are incredibly well done, while others were a bit too obtuse for my taste. I got stuck a few times and I can only advise people to keep a level head, refer back to earlier obtained information and stay perceptive at all times. When this particular aspect of PARANORMASIGHT clicked it really clicked for me. Finally I wanted to praise its visual style. The game uses these panorama-like scenes where you can freely look around and inspect your surroundings. It helps to make the characters stand out and showcase their fun designs, designed by Gen Kobayashi who is most well known for his work on The World Ends With You. Striking this great balance between functional and memorable design helps set the characters apart, even with their minimal animations.

Outside of its story and world, PARANORMASIGHT can falter a little bit at times. I specifically do not enjoy the way the game controls in docked mode. It is clearly designed with a touch-screen interface in mind for the majority of the game. I found it annoying that in order to talk with characters I was required to move the cursor to their faces and press the a-button before being able to select my option from the dialogue menu. Especially with long and slightly repetitive conversations this became a bit of a drag. I also wasn’t too fond of the diving minigame. Thankfully most of this was optional, but the way in which you go out and increase your diver rank in order to better swim, find shells and harvest pearls felt so separate from the main game that I didn’t really bother to keep on playing this when the story kicked into gear. Finally, certain moments in the story require you to type out character names. While this is fine and requires you to really pay attention to your collected information, I did struggle with having to remember Japanese names and occasionally Japanese historical names. Thankfully there is no penalty for giving an incorrect answer, but it did remove some of the tension when I spelled out the wrong name four times during a critical moment in the story.

I was enthralled by the mystery and story of PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid’s Curse. If you like mystery stories with a supernatural twist, I can recommend this game without any doubt. The cast of characters is a lot of fun, the ways in which the story unfolds are cleverly done and there’s even a dash of meta elements that make the game a lot more memorable. As a newcomer it has made me very excited to go back and experience the first game in the series. It has also added Ise and the Mie prefecture on my must-visit list for my next trip to Japan. I really cannot ask for much more than that. Well maybe aside from another entry in the PARANORMASIGHT series that is. Consider me a fan now!

[It takes a village to scare you to bits.]

14

TalkBack / Resident Evil Village (Review) Switch 2

« on: February 23, 2026, 05:00:00 AM »

It takes a village to scare you to bits.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/74480/resident-evil-village-review-switch-2

Over the past few years, I’ve been on a journey discovering all the Resident Evil games. I’ve played all the mainline titles and in particular loved the remakes Capcom has been releasing since 2019’s Resident Evil 2. While I’ve yet to try my hand at Resident Evil VII, its sequel, Resident Evil Village, had its claws fully in me. A perfect blend of the horror that I’ve been told made RE7 a hit and the action-formula that was redefined with Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil 8 pulls across the series history for a tense and varied adventure that occasionally stumbles, but shines on Nintendo Switch 2.

Set a few years after the events of RE7–recapped with a very quick video for newcomers–you play Ethan Winters, and on a fateful night, tragedy strikes and his daughter is kidnapped. He wakes up in the woods of a snowy ‘European’ mountainside village. Unclear how he arrived here, he sets out to save his daughter. Of course it wouldn’t be a Resident Evil game before the village is overrun by hordes of deadly and bloodthirsty monsters. As you set out on your quest to pursue Mother Miranda and the lords of this region, you will not only be chased by evil beings, but also learn about what exactly happened to Ethan’s family. While I do not think you'll need to have played Resident Evil 7 to understand what is going on, the game does build on the events from that story. Still as a newcomer I had no trouble following along with Ethan's (mis)adventures.

RE8 uses the structure set out in the genre-defining Resident Evil 4. Finding limited ammunition and survival tools, you try to make your way through abandoned houses, a haunted castle, a creepy mansion, and much more. You can choose whether to play the game in first-person or third-person. The game has been designed from the ground up for first-person, but as someone who prefers Resident Evil for its third-person gameplay (and frankly, because I’m a wimp), that was the obvious choice. Frankly, I have not been bothered by the fact that all cutscenes play out in first person as these scenes neatly transition from gameplay segments. Of course, you will be shooting a lot of weapons and upgrading them with funds you find along the way. Plenty of treasures are hidden everywhere, which sometimes can even be combined with other items to increase their value. Do not expect the game to be as puzzle heavy as the original Resident Evil or even the RE2 remake, but inspecting items to discover secrets never grows old in my opinion.

The horror in RE8 is particularly strong and feels like it is pulling from across the series history. Whether it is being overrun by hordes of monsters and holding out with limited ammo, to being chased through tight corridors and hallways by one of the main antagonists. One sequence in particular evokes the psychological horror you may expect from something like Silent Hill. It helps to set RE8 apart from the other games in the series. I also really like the structure of the game. While the path is linear you can almost consider the main objectives to be tied to their own dungeons. In between these moments you return to the village and can undertake sidequests for the shopkeeper Duke, or explore the town to find new collectibles with the keys and information you’ve gathered. It helps to make the village feel like an extension of the gameplay, rather than just a backdrop. Of course the game plays into this with slightly shifting enemies and scares to keep you on your toes.

Time for the best news: Resident Evil Village runs fantastic on Nintendo Switch 2. The framerate only dips when shifting between major areas, but recovers quickly and remains rock-solid throughout. Objects look clean with no weird anti-aliasing. It helps to convey the semi-realistic visual style and heightens the threat that monsters pose for Ethan. Motion controls for aiming are supported as well as some helpful options like aim-assist. The performance remains consistent whether you’re playing in handheld or docked mode. The majority of my play sessions involved handheld mode with a good headset. It makes for a really immersive experience, while still allowing me to more easily look away from the screen during certain moments. Even later segments that are more demanding, such as large boss fights and hordes of enemies all run smoothly on Switch 2. The one visual gripe is reflections and in particular the way water looks. During a segment set in a flooded mine, the low-resolution water did stick out quite a bit.

I've had a blast playing Resident Evil 8. The game plays wonderfully on Nintendo Switch 2 and combines a lot of the elements I’ve come to love about the series. If you’re looking to get caught up on the last game before beginning with Resident Evil Requiem, you really cannot go wrong with this version of RE8. The additional DLCs are included as well as the Mercenaries mode. While it does 'sag' a little in the middle part of the story, the final sequences of the game were great.

[A new IP? With a novel gameplay concept? And it's fun? In this economy?!]

15

TalkBack / PRAGMATA (Nintendo Switch 2) Demo Preview

« on: February 10, 2026, 11:08:24 PM »

A new IP? With a novel gameplay concept? And it's fun? In this economy?!

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/74257/pragmata-nintendo-switch-2-demo-preview

In all fairness, I have dismissed PRAGMATA up until literally two months ago, when the latest trailer debuted during the Keighley’s. I knew the game had a very long announcement and development time, revealed to be in development for the PlayStation 5 and releasing in 2022. That obviously took a lot longer than expected, but now PRAGMATA is real and releasing later this year on all platforms. While the demo had been out for a few months, it now being available on Nintendo Switch 2 as well finally got me to try it out. Capcom has been doing great work the last several years on their well-known franchises, but with PRAGMATA I feel like they are really cooking.

The demo isn’t that extensive, it took me about 15 minutes on the first try, but it is great at setting the scene. As a stranded space marine, you control Hugh Williams, who is assisted by a little android girl named Diana. As the duo gets besieged by robots, Diana is able to use her hacking abilities to open up the robotic armor, giving Hugh an opening to destroy their opponents. The demo has a pretty clear goal. Reaching the main power supply and restoring power to the space station. Along the way you’ll need to access and open gates as well as fighting different types of enemies.

What I especially like about the gameplay loop of PRAGMATA so far is that at all times you are essentially controlling two characters. This isn’t a situation like The Last of Us or other games where you have access to multiple characters and switch back and forth between them. Diana’s abilities are strictly linked to the face buttons and left shoulder buttons, while Hugh’s primary actions are controlled with the Joysticks, D-pad and right shoulder buttons. I’ll admit that it takes a little to get adjusted to. Because each time you encounter an enemy or obstacle, a little grid pops up for Diana’s hacking. With the face-buttons corresponding to a specific direction, you need to get from the starting block to the green node. This quickly becomes time sensitive as gameplay does not halt or stop during these segments. Dodging with Hugh becomes key as you are dividing your attention between the hacking and the combat. Using his (limited) thrusters to dodge and jump, as well as supplemental weapons that can slow down the advancing robots, you always feel like you’re multitasking on the spot.

This mechanic is something that strangely enough reminded me of 2012’s ZombiU on the Wii U. Here, each time you had to go into your inventory, you’d need to look down to the Wii U gamepad’s screen and could be jumped by enemies. This interactive play between the player’s attention to the hacking as well as the robots is fundamental here. I think that Pragmata’s use of this mechanic is such a clever twist on this idea. In the age of second screen media, it is almost baffling to me that this hasn’t been explored before. It all comes down to a thrilling boss battle that combines continued hacking, with specific nodes that need to be avoided, and dodging out of the way of a targeted rocket system in time to deal massive damage to specific parts of the enemy.

If I have any concern it is more so with the overall structure of the game. The demo hints at a dedicated hideout, where you can upgrade weapons and abilities, as well as a way to use all the energy you collect from downed enemies. While I don’t expect this system to be as clever as the combat on display here, the painfully slow way in which your basic gun recharges had me wishing I could upgrade it right away. It also could be this specific set piece, but the space station really felt straightforward. Going off the main path did reward me with an extra repair capsule and there’s boxes to break aplenty, but the log entries weren’t that engaging to dive deeper into the world the game presents. I can only hope that the final game has more open areas that can accommodate larger enemies that require different methods to defeat.

What I am not disappointed with is the performance on Nintendo Switch 2. Before I booted up the demo I played the demo on the PlayStation 5 in fidelity mode, to get a sense of how it runs on ‘beefy’ hardware. But in all honesty, the Switch 2 version to my eyes runs on par with the PlayStation 5 demo. It remains to be seen if that can be kept up with in the full game, but I was shocked at how well the game handled on Nintendo’s handheld. Especially given that this game has not been designed from scratch for the Switch 2. The only downside is the lack of a performance mode that can bump the framerate from 30 to 60, but I really wasn’t bothered by the presentation. Textures look a bit worse for wear and the hair on Diana isn’t fantastic, but those are details I can happily brush aside if it means I can comfortably play this on my commute. But of course, I couldn’t pass this opportunity to let John loose on the footage and see if he could spot any difference. Shoutouts to John for providing us with a bit more in-depth technical analysis:

"PRAGMATA on Switch 2 demonstrates some interesting yet clearly very intentional choices from Capcom. On Playstation 5 PRAGMATA runs at 60 frames-per-second in its fidelity mode and only reaches a resolution of 1080p, a 50% scale of full 2160p. Not bad by any means but not especially high for a PS5 game. An alternate performance mode pushes the frame rate even higher. It seems like the developers have favored fluidity over image quality and that decision has been maintained on Switch 2. The Switch 2 version only has one graphics mode but just like PS5 it is targeting 60 frames-per-second. To accomplish this the internal resolution when playing docked has been dropped all the way down to 540p. We're obviously very limited by a relatively short demo but after counting four different shots I saw no indication of dynamic resolution. And in modern games the internal resolution of a render doesn't tell the whole story when paired with scaling solutions like DLSS. The game certainly has a soft appearance but manages to look fairly good for 540p. I should note that the HUD including the hacking screen is rendering at 1080p on Switch 2. So if we assume the Switch 2 is running, more or less, a 1080p version of the game VS the PS5's 4k version, then the relative resolution scaling is actually the same for both as 540p represents 50% of a full 1080p. I'd love to see Capcom try out a 30fps cap on the Switch 2 version just to see how high we could see that resolution go but its clear frame rate is the priority here.".

All in all, this demo has rocketed PRAGMATA to one of my more anticipated games of the year. It’s gameplay ideas feel fresh, it comes across as a cool blend of a narrative driven action game with puzzle elements and it seems to be running great on Nintendo Switch 2. If this game doesn’t overstay its welcome and has a few more tricks up its sleeve, we may just be looking at one of the biggest surprise multiplatform games of this generation. Only time will tell, but do yourself a favor and check out this demo.

[Pummeling Powerful foes with a Paintbrush]

16

TalkBack / Hand-Drawn Metroidvania Constance Coming to Nintendo Switch in May

« on: February 05, 2026, 05:32:05 AM »

Pummeling Powerful foes with a Paintbrush

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/74186/hand-drawn-metroidvania-constance-coming-to-nintendo-switch-in-may

Included in the Japanese version of today’s Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase it was confirmed that Constance will be coming to Nintendo Switch on May 1st, 2026. This game was released on PC at the end of 2025 and received a lot of buzz. In this gorgeous 2D metroidvania, that has often been compared to Hollow Knight, sees you playing as the titular Constance. As you explore six biomes with unique enemies and hazards, you will uncover secrets, face platforming challenges and unlock new brush techniques to help Constance find inner purpose. This game is developed by Berlin-based developed Blue Backpack and published by ByteRockers’ Games and PARCO Games.

[New Adventures from Square-Enix on Nintendo Switch]

17

TalkBack / Square Enix reveals PARANORMASIGHT sequel and release date for The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales

« on: February 05, 2026, 05:20:56 AM »

New Adventures from Square-Enix on Nintendo Switch

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/74185/square-enix-reveals-paranormasight-sequel-and-release-date-for-the-adventures-of-elliot-the-millennium-tales

Square Enix showed no signs of slowing down during the Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase today. Aside from announcing a June 3rd release date for Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth , there were also several new games shown as well as dates confirmed for other projects from the Japanese studio.

Last year’s The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales was confirmed today to be releasing on Nintendo Switch 2 on June 18th. As you travel through four different ages, you see how Elliot’s world changes throughout time. The age of Safekeeping, where Elliot is originally from, the Age of Reconstruction after humans went nearly extinct, as well as the Ages of Magic and Budding. Every age has a distinct look as well as weapons that are specific to certain time periods. The demo for The Adventures of Elliot can still be played through the Nintendo eShop. An extended trailer was released after the direct and can be viewed below.

A surprise was a new title in the PARANORMASIGHT series. This visual novel, developed by Xeen and published by Square Enix is a standalone game set in the coastal region of Ise-shima Japan. PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid’s Curse stars Yuza Minakuchi, who as a pearl-diver finds another version of himself. This begins a strange series of events with a large cast all centered around the mystery of the mermaids. The gameplay is centered around investigating clues, speaking to witnesses and exploring the bottom of the bay itself. For fans of Famicom Detective Club and other visual novels this is one that looks promising. PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid’s Curse launches on february 19th for Nintendo Switch. The game can be pre-ordered today.

[Very PRAGMATATIC]

18

TalkBack / Capcom Brings Amiibo, Demos and more in Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase

« on: February 05, 2026, 05:01:00 AM »

Very PRAGMATATIC

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/74181/capcom-brings-amiibo-demos-and-more-in-nintendo-direct-partner-showcase

During today’s Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase the upcoming games from Capcom couldn’t be missed. A slew of new releases is arriving on Nintendo Switch 2 very soon. The best part? You can try most of them for free later today.

Resident Evil Requiem, the ninth mainline entry in the famous survival horror-franchise was already announced for Nintendo Switch 2. The game launches on February 27th on Nintendo Switch 2 and today reaffirmed several of the additional goodies you can pick up as well. Resident Evil Biohazard and Resident Evil Village (number 7 and 8 respectively) are coming to Nintendo Switch 2 on the same day as Requiem. Additionally alongside an amiibo figure of Grace Ashcroft, an amiibo of Leon Kennedy, famed pro wrestler from Resident Evil 4 will be made available later this summer. A new look at the Resident Evil Requiem Pro controller was also shown, alongside several difficulty options that are accommodating for new and returning players. You can play the game in either first or third-person mode and even change them depending on the character you control. Finally, a special Creator's Voice interview with Koshi Nakanishi will be published online at a later date.

PRAGMATA is a brand new IP from Capcom that sees you controlling a spacefarer named Hugh Williams and a child-like android Diana. The goal is to escape a lunar research station that is swarmed with robots that are almost impenetrable. That is, unless you use Diana’s hacking abilities to unlock their armor and shoot them with Hugh. The gameplay seems to balance small puzzle-like minigames that can be solved Diana for additional buffs, with third-person action at the same time. The game will launch on April 24th 2026 for Nintendo Switch 2. On that same day the Diana amiibo will also be available. A free demo of the game can be found in the Nintendo eShop later today.

Finally Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection was confirmed to be releasing on March 13th. You can train the Monsties in this game and give them special abilities with the Rite of Channeling mechanic. You can pre-order the game today, but additionally a free demo is also available on the Nintendo Switch 2 eShop as well. Your progress will be carried over to the full release as well.

[Bethesda brings the big guns to Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026]

19

TalkBack / The Elder Scrolls IV Remastered, Fallout 4 and Indiana Jones arrive on Nintendo Switch 2 later this year.

« on: February 05, 2026, 04:46:58 AM »

Bethesda brings the big guns to Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/74179/the-elder-scrolls-iv-remastered-fallout-4-and-indiana-jones-arrive-on-nintendo-switch-2-later-this-year

During the Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase today Bethesda revealed a number of titles coming to Nintendo Switch 2. This includes several titles that have never made their appearance on Nintendo systems.

First up is Fallout 4: Anniversary edition. This is a port of 2015’s Fallout 4, that includes the six official expansions Automatron, the Far Harbor, Nuka-World and three workshop packs (Wasteland Workshop, Contraptions Workshop and the Vault-Tec Workshop) which can be used to create new items to expand your base. The game will launch on Nintendo Switch 2 on february 24th 2026. Pre-orders begin today in the Nintendo eShop. It is unclear if the game will also be released at retail.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was already revealed last year to be coming to Nintendo Switch 2. In this first-person action adventure, set between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, you play as Indiana Jones and uncover the mystery of The Great Circle. The game was lauded after its release in December 2024 and seems to be running smoothly according to the first trailer. This version of the game does not come with the ‘Order of the Giants’ DLC expansion. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will launch on Nintendo Switch 2 on May 12th 2026. Pre-orders are open now in the Nintendo eShop.

The final surprise from Bethesda was the announcement that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered will be coming to Nintendo Switch 2. This remaster was released last year on all major platforms to critical acclaim. In a similar vein to other Elder Scrolls games this is an action RPG which can either be played in first- or third-person and centralize around the customization by the player. As you explore the region of Tamriel, you fight monsters, go on quests and approach fights as you see fit. All graphics have been updated and recreated from the original Elder Scrolls IV and the base game includes the original Shivering Isle and Knights of the Nine expansions.  The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remasted is coming to Switch 2 later this year.

[Enjoying This Beauty Will Require Some Brawn]

20

TalkBack / MIO: Memories in Orbit (Switch 2) Review

« on: January 19, 2026, 06:00:00 AM »

Enjoying This Beauty Will Require Some Brawn

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/73964/mio-memories-in-orbit-switch-2-review

MIO - Memories in Orbit struck me from its reveal during the Nintendo Direct in June 2024. While its release was delayed because of a certain other indie Metroidvania last year, it has now graced both the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. In short, while this game is jawdroppingly gorgeous, I found myself getting stuck on its pacing and hurdles more often than I would have liked. There’s a pearl of a game buried here, but it will take a dedicated soul to get it to come out.

In MIO you play as the titular protagonist: A small female robot that wakes up with no memories of her own. You’re stranded in a torn-down, yet hauntingly beautiful world called The Vessel, which is filled with biomechanical beings that have been disconnected from its functions. In order to regain her memories, MIO must traverse the lands of The Vessel and reconnect the world. A lot of the story is told through the remaining androids that can assist MIO with upgrades or quests or scrolls left behind that explain what is going on. The Vessel is intriguing to explore–from frozen down ruins, to overgrown gardens and abandoned laboratories.

While MIO starts out with nothing more than a double jump and a straightforward attack, as you defeat bosses you regain your memories and with those come new abilities. There’s a creative set on display, including a dodge, grapple with the tendril-like hair MIO has, as well as the ability to climb along walls and ceilings like a spider. Structurally, the game is designed like a Metroidvania, but very little is spelled out for the player. You are actively encouraged to poke around the map and find new methods of moving forward. Mechanically this makes MIO as a character much more nimble and focused on aerial combat. Double jumps can be recharged by hitting objects in the air. When woven together with next abilities, you can do some pretty fantastic platforming tricks. I especially liked the aforementioned dodge; when timed perfectly, it enables you to not only dodge an incoming strike, but use it as a way of moving forward or upward again by bouncing against a projectile again and again. It is during this exploration and platforming that the game truly excels.

However, the opening hours of the game in particular were brutal. It's not just the combination of being lost with no clear objective of where to go, but especially the management of resources and the lack of abilities at MIO’s disposal. Every enemy in the game drops Nacre, little blobs of energy that can be exchanged at vendors for new upgrades. The upgrade system, however, is limited to a set amount of slots. At the beginning you may only have like 20 points available, and equipping modifiers will eat up slots fast. Even your health-bar is a predetermined slot that takes up 5 points. Whenever you fall in combat, you lose all the non-crystalized Nacre you were carrying. A huge setback, in particular after exploring large areas of the map and not just returning to a central point, but also not being able to spend your hard earned Nacre. It became a hindrance to the fun and snappy nature of Metroidvanias that I have enjoyed most in the past.

Losing progress is a design decision I can live with, but because of the lack of meaningful upgrades, combat becomes stale rather quickly, especially early on when abilities are limited to a jump and a grapple. That aforementioned dodge ability? You’ll need to have beaten at least two bosses before it is unlocked and the game tends to be unforgiving in those. While assist-options are available, and I did have to resort to them, they feel limited in their scope. Options like making regular enemies passive and regaining health only when standing on the ground for a long time do help out, but they didn’t take away the pretty hefty challenges. In particular, this is because the runbacks to get back to bosses can be brutal as well.

What kept pushing me on, though, was the absolutely stellar visual and audio design. There are no loading screens on Switch 2, and interconnected rooms feel like a cohesive whole within the world. You don’t just open a door and enter a room, but pass through interior walls and see bits that MIO herself is unable to see. The gardens have so many colors that it never ceases to look gorgeous. The music is serene and has a lot of beautiful vocal-performances, and can be just as intense during boss fights. Douze Dixièmes weren’t lying when they said that they took inspiration from European comics, and they have truly outdone themselves by embracing bright colors and shimmering lights, rather than the drab and dour most games in this genre go for. There is no game that looks like this out there, and it pops off the screen on both Switch 2 and especially if you have a Switch OLED model available to you.

I’m truly at a crossroads recommending MIO - Memories in Orbit. On the one hand it is a gorgeous Metroidvania that you can immediately tell a lot of care and attention went into. This game’s visual design is without equal and that truly sets it apart from other titles in this genre. I love how the focus is a lot more on movement and platforming, especially embracing a more aerial approach that will have you performing jumps and tricks that most other games tend to leave behind for the latter half. On the other hand, the combat and overall design became quite frustrating for me to stick with it. Combat never feels powerful and versatile enough, in particular during the early hours, that you have an impact. Progression is slow and will require making deliberate choices on your build depending on the area or boss you’ll be tackling. It is a disservice to the beautiful world on display here that I was reset back to the start so many times and lost a lot of the meaningful progress I had made. MIO - Memories in Orbit is at odds with itself too much for my personal taste. But I also cannot deny that if you are a fan of this particular genre, MIO is one that should not be overlooked.

[Groove is in the Heart and Optimization]

21

TalkBack / Kluge Interactive on Synthesizing the Perfect Licensed Rhythm Game for Switch

« on: December 15, 2025, 03:00:00 AM »

Groove is in the Heart and Optimization

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/interview/73611/kluge-interactive-on-synthesizing-the-perfect-licensed-rhythm-game-for-switch

A few months back a new version of the popular rhythm game Synth Riders was announced to be coming to Nintendo Switch. As a fresh take on the rhythm game genre, we wanted to sit down with Arturo Perez, CEO from Kluge Interactive. I was especially curious as to what it takes to translate a game from VR to the Nintendo Switch and what goes into maintaining a game with a fully licensed soundtrack. In this interview we chat about what went into creating Synth Riders for consoles and what players can expect from this upcoming rhythm game when it releases on Nintendo Switch this week.

Willem Hilhorst (Nintendo World Report, WH): Can you talk a little bit about how Synth Riders for Nintendo Switch came together. I understand that Kluge has mostly worked on VR titles. What was it like to shift from immersive entertainment to a '2D game' on a console?

Arturo Perez (CEO, Kluge Interactive): The shift to Switch wasn't really a "pivot" from VR—it's more of a strategic expansion that's core to our DNA. It's in our nature to expand unique player experiences across platforms, and Switch represented a massive, underserved opportunity.

Our philosophy was translating the core of what makes Synth Riders special—that immersion within a musical, futuristic cyberpunk world—to the Switch platform. We had to reimagine how players would experience that flow state and rhythm-driven gameplay without the physical immersion of VR.

The exciting part was that Switch actually gave us new creative opportunities. We could introduce customizable Synth Rider avatars with outfits and accessories, and the third-person perspective actually enhances the hoverboard stunts and rail-grinding visuals in ways that had not been the focus in VR. We also leaned into Switch's strength as THE platform for local multiplayer, building out 4-player versus and co-op modes that tap into that Mario Kart/Smash Bros. social gaming audience.

WH: Adapting the gameplay from full body movement, fitness almost seems like quite a challenge. But the Switch also feels like an ideal platform to retain some of those ideas. Did you consider keeping stuff like motion controls to catch the music notes?

AP: That's a great question. In VR, Synth Riders emphasizes natural, flowing freestyle dance movements, and we definitely explored various control schemes for Switch, including motion controls.

Ultimately, we translated that fluidity to dual analog stick control for left/right hand note-catching, plus button inputs for rail-riding and stunts. This gives players precision and responsiveness while maintaining that sense of rhythm and flow.

We also adapted the 360-degree immersion of VR into a dynamic camera system that anticipates note patterns and obstacles, keeping players locked into the action. And while we removed the workout/fitness aspect, we intensified the score-chasing and competitive mechanics—three difficulty levels, leaderboards, and 4-player battles replace calorie-burning with pure gaming skill.

What we kept intact was that fundamental beat-synced gameplay where you catch notes and ride rails in perfect sync with the music. The core loop is pure Synth Riders; the delivery method is just platform-specific.

WH: Few rhythm games have a dedicated cast of characters that go on a story together. What made the team decide to include a story specifically for a rhythm game?

AP: We wanted to give players something beyond playing through a tracklist. The Campaign mode emerged from our cyberpunk aesthetic and world-building—we had this rich futuristic setting, so why not give it stakes and narrative?

In Campaign mode, rebels are racing against time to stop a ruthless AI named XANDER from seizing control in this adrenaline-fueled musical battleground. It adds progression and purpose to the gameplay, making each track feel like it matters beyond just chasing high scores.

The fate of the city is literally in your hands, and that narrative framework transforms rhythm gameplay into something more epic and engaging.

WH:The Switch is currently over eight years old and the hardware is showing its age. Can you walk me a little bit through what it is like to develop a completely new title for this hardware? And were there things you ended up needing to cut back on to keep it running smoothly?

AP:Developing for Switch definitely requires optimization, but we viewed the hardware constraints as creative opportunities rather than limitations. We prioritized maintaining the neon cyberpunk aesthetic and those retro-futuristic cityscapes that define Synth Riders' visual identity—that was non-negotiable.

We also focused our technical resources on ensuring the beat-synced gameplay remains perfectly responsive, because in a rhythm game, timing is everything. We also made sure the game runs smoothly across all three difficulty levels and maintains stable performance in 4-player local multiplayer, which was crucial for the social gaming experience we wanted to deliver.

We feel this game release is the start of our journey on the Nintendo Switch ecosystem, and we’re also excited to continue innovating in the future for Nintendo fans of rhythm games.

WH: I think music rhythm games are make or break depending on their song selection, but especially how well the songs translate to the gameplay and visuals. There's a lot of DLC available and already announced. Are there unique features to these songs aside from the music?

AP: Absolutely. We have up to 64 electrifying tracks in the Ultimate Edition Bundle, and each is carefully crafted for gameplay. The variety spans from synthwave—the genre that inspired the game's VR origins—to '80s anthems and today's hitsThe DLC music packs—Lady Gaga Music Pack, Gorillaz Music Pack, Monstercat Music Pack, 80s Mixtape: Side B, Current Waves, and Synthwave Essentials Vol. 3—each bring new beats and movements to take on. Every track is designed with note patterns, rail sequences, and obstacle choreography that's synchronized to the music's rhythm and intensity. The cyberpunk visuals and environments shift to complement each song's energy and style. What makes us unique is that we offer a broad genre diversity spanning ‘80s legends, current pop, and synthwave all in one package. And we're the ONLY mainstream rhythm game honoring synthwave heritage, which gives us credibility with music-centric gamers and nostalgia-driven ‘80s fans.

WH: I'm always excited about new music rhythm games, but have also been burned by experiences like FUSER and other games that used licensed music tracks. How do you feel about the inclusion of so many licensed tracks and is there a risk of those being made unavailable a decade from now? How do you feel as a creator about that aspect of your game?

AP: What I can say is that we've built Synth Riders as a franchise with staying power—we've already proven that in VR with ongoing support, cross-platform multiplayer, and partnerships with Apple, Meta, and PlayStation. We're committed to this ecosystem long-term. The base game includes 40-64 songs depending on the edition, so there's substantial content that will be available. We've also structured our DLC as music packs that represent complete, curated experiences, which reflects our commitment to preserving these music collections. As creators, we want players to be able to enjoy these experiences for years to come, and we're working within the industry's licensing framework to make that possible.

WH: Do you have a small detail in the game or aspect that you are particularly proud of? Perhaps it is in the UI design, a small reference or a little personal touch that you put in there that you especially like?

AP: The couch co-op mode is something I'm particularly proud of. Most rhythm games are competitive by nature—you're battling for high scores or racing against each other. But we created a mode where up to four players must work together and share the beat, where all skill levels are welcome. We feel the couch co-op mode is a great example of how we love to bring innovation to our gameplay, in a way that’s uniquely designed for each platform.

There's something special about that collaborative rhythm experience—everyone contributing to the same musical flow, supporting each other through challenging sections, and celebrating together when you nail a difficult passage. It captures what we love about music itself: it's better when shared.

Synth Riders launches on Nintendo Switch December 15th 2025. The base game comes with 28 songs for $29,99. The Deluxe edition features 42 songs and includes tracks by Gorillaz and Lady Gaga and costs $39,99. The ultimate edition has 64 songs with all six DLC packs for $69,99. DLC can be bought individually between $7,99 and $10,99.

[The Road Through Hell is Paved with Glorious Halfpipes]

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TalkBack / Skate Story (Switch 2) Review

« on: December 08, 2025, 07:00:00 AM »

The Road Through Hell is Paved with Glorious Halfpipes

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/73525/skate-story-switch-2-review

It was almost three years ago that Skate Story by Sam Eng was announced. I remember seeing the trailer at the end of a presentation and being utterly enthralled. It was a weird feeling. On the one hand, this game was shaping up to look gorgeous and fully lean into its vibes. On the other hand, I’m unashamed to admit that I have always been downright awful at skating games. Yet, I wanted more than anything to delve headfirst into this experience. As the years went on, whenever something popped up about the game it rose up my list of anticipated titles. Now, more than three years after its reveal, it launches on Nintendo Switch 2 day and date with other platforms. This literal road through hell isn’t without issues. However, when the music kickflips in and the vibes become immaculate, Skate Story operates on a primal instinct of skating and survival.

As a demon made of glass, you sign a deal with the devil. In order to get your soul back, you shall devour the moons of the underworld. But of course, this cannot be done on foot. You will have to skate. As you advance through the layers of the underworld and meet a pretty bizarre cast of weird ‘lil guys, you perform tricks, battle philosophers and even perform laundry for the devil. There’s no beating around the bush: Skate Story is truly unique. From its gorgeous artstyle, presented through what seems like a million filters and lenses, to the way in which characters speak, it feels strangely poetic for something that is in essence masquerading as a sports game. But as you peel back the layers, it becomes clear that Skate Story is as much a game about its creator as it is one about skating. Pretty much every chapter consists of an ‘open area’ and a linear level. The linear levels are where the game excels. Oftentimes you need to reach the end of the stage by skating through the goal. Perhaps you will have to pass a number of gates, or make enough speed at certain checkpoints. With a thumping soundtrack by Blood Cultures, perhaps one of the best of the year, the vibes are simply unmatched. Rolling through levels at breakneck speeds while performing tricks never gets old. These tricks are vital as they are the only way to take down the forces that oppose the Skater. Each of the shoulder buttons is designated to the way your feet are positioned on the board. Combining this with either jumps (ollies) or powerslides and grinds gives way to a ton of combinations.

To that extent every chapter ends with a boss battle, where you use your tricks and accumulating score to defeat an enormous entity. Whether they are beings that want to stop you from skating, or one of the many moons you’re looking to devour, these bosses are almost structured like a dance. In an open park you can do tricks, grinds and other flourishes to extend your combo meter. Variety is key here, as tricks get stale if you keep performing the same one over and over. Once you’ve chained together enough combos, you can finish them off with a stomp in mid-air, to attack the health bar of the boss. It makes for an entertaining battle that relies both on your reaction timing, as well as your knowledge of how to best use the terrain to perform tricks at the right time to maximize your damage. They can be pretty spectacular, especially in the later chapters where the game combines the linear levels to become a race of sorts and you’ll need to make tricks along the way that can damage the boss at the end of the level. These stages are the lifeblood of Skate Story. They are engrossing and transcendent in a way I haven’t really experienced since something like Tetris Effect. The music, visuals and gameplay melt together into this unforgettable experience.

And yet the proceedings often come to a screeching halt, in large part due to the structure of the game. The aforementioned open areas are designed to let you skate around, practice new tricks and complete smaller tasks. Clearing out corruption or jumping over potholes gives you souls as a currency that can be spent on skatedecks, trucks and wheels to personalize your skateboard. The offerings are fine enough, but none impact any of the tricks or performance of your board. Given there are only two new decks in each gift shop I didn’t really feel incentivized to go out and collect a lot of souls, especially as progressing normally through the game already gave me enough to change the board to my liking. That made these open areas feel a bit hollow overall. There’s the implication of challenges, but not really a reward worthwhile to fully explore these areas, which makes it feel like the brakes come slamming down and impact the momentum of the story, especially given how many chapters repeat this structure. Only by the end, when boss battles and singular levels would follow one after another did I get invested again into the tale being told. But even then, the story feels like it’s ending five times before arriving at its final conclusion. Not a crescendo after a large build up, but instead we get encore after encore when the audience was already set to go home.

Visually, the Switch 2 version of Skate Story performs well enough in docked mode. The effects do often impede on the overall performance of the game, though. An inconsistent performance, especially in the busier levels, sees fire particles make the game drop from 60 frames per second to 30 and stutter somewhere in-between. In handheld mode, the resolution takes a pretty big hit and retains its uneven framerate. When you are speeding through the levels, you can feel that the game is struggling to keep up. While I do think it is intentional, this also somewhat hinders the cutscenes and story segments. You’ll manually need to push the A-button to continue to the next scene or line of text during a cutscene. Perhaps it is the way in which the game is written, which frankly isn’t always that straightforward, but so many times I was sure that I had skipped over some information as the scene moved on to a new character or segment without a clear transition. It ended up making the emotional hooks of Skate Story feel jittery and disorganized.

But when everything clicks together and you are on that skateboard, rolling down a slope through the underworld, Skate Story is truly out of this world. Performing tricks never ceased to look cool. Every time I crashed into a wall and shattered into thousands of pieces of glass it looked amazing. I would pick up my board and go again and again. Even the final devilishly difficult stages came together while that phenomenal score by Blood Cultures transported me away. There are some rough areas and structural issues that are hard to look past that are perhaps even more pronounced on the Nintendo Switch 2. But when I reached the credits and that original announcement trailer was playing in the background, I felt like I had come full circle. Experiences like this can be long-lasting even if they are a little rough, aren’t polished to a sheen, and occasionally show the screams from their creator. By the end I was left with this profound piece of art, something so utterly human. It is filled with love and passion, but frustration and despair, often stretching at the seams. I do not know Sam Eng, but I have a feeling that I got an insight into what he loves about making games. I may never be a skating game diehard, but Skate Story is a story worth sharing.

[A Legacy To Be Remembered]

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TalkBack / Simogo Legacy Collection (Switch 2) Review

« on: December 01, 2025, 09:00:00 PM »

A Legacy To Be Remembered

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/73521/simogo-legacy-collection-switch-2-review

Over the past few years we’ve seen a slew of companies releasing compilations of their most famous series. Mega Man, Mortal Kombat, Atari’s entire company history and a handful of Capcom fighting collections make it possible to experience hundreds of games in a streamlined, modern form. Given the legacies of these well known franchises and their parent companies, it is no wonder that they serve as an easy way of making old intellectual property relevant and accessible again. On the occasion that more independent games have been included in collections, it has been in a more documentary form, such as the Making of Karataka or Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter story. So it’s been more than just refreshing to play the Simogo Legacy Collection over the last few weeks; it’s a door showing a path forward for smaller studios to highlight their lost or overlooked titles while presenting them with the necessary context to keep them relevant. This legacy collection isn’t a simple cash-grab it is an indie studio pioneering a new format. Even more stunning? Simogo makes it look almost effortless.

Simogo is the Swedish indie studio that is best known for Sayonara Wild Hearts and last year’s Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. Yet the studio has been making games since 2010. This collection chronicles all their games, except for the aforementioned pair. There are seven games included here, each with a wildly different style and gameplay approach. Titles like Kosmo Spin and Bumpy Road were clearly designed to take advantage of the features of smartphones, back during the first wave of indie games released for these platforms. With clever touch mechanics, they are score chasers with a unique look and feel to them. Beat Sneak Bandit is a full-on rhythm game that could’ve been a minigame in something like Rhythm Heaven, where you need to tap in the rhythm but explicitly so as to not get caught by security guards while robbing manors. SPL-T is perhaps one of the most addicting puzzle games, where the goal is to make horizontal and vertical splits on the screen to increase your score. But where you make the splits is essential in order to make sure that you do not run out of space. Blocks disappear only after enough splits have been made and will be filled by blocks of the same shape stacked on top.

Then there are the narrative experiences. If you’ve loved the ambiguous nature of something like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, you’ll immediately recognize the writing style in DEVICE 6 or the atmosphere in Year Walk. These games are wonderful stories that also play with the way you interact with your device. DEVICE 6 especially had me hooked. Twisting and turning the screen in order to follow the text and find solutions to the puzzles. Year Walk is a bit more straightforward, but if you have not played it before it comes highly recommended. It is a suspenseful narrative horror game based on Swedish folklore with an absolutely gorgeous artstyle. Finally I’d be remiss to not mention A Sailor’s Dream. I wasn’t aware of this particular game and it was a delight. With a story told over the course of multiple days as well as specific radio broadcasts every hour, it made for a game I kept returning to over and over. Perhaps not every game in this collection will keep your undivided attention, and their mobile roots can still be felt occasionally, but given that over a decade has passed for most of these games, they are still in remarkably great shape.

And I think that staying power is emblematic of what Simogo has been able to pull off here. All these games were designed for a wide variety of devices. Most of their early games aren’t even available anymore on smartphones. But this collection of games gives you so many options to play and control them. Two sticks on controllers can simulate multi-touch for games like A Sailor’s Dream, where you can control two cursors individually. You can adjust the speed and size of each individual cursor. Is playing in docked mode not your style? Touch screen, motion controls and (for Switch 2) mouse controls are all available and work exceptionally well. Given that a lot of the games are designed to play in short sessions, I had a lot of fun picking them up whenever I had a short break. The wide range of options lowers the barrier of entry significantly.

It all comes together in this wonderfully designed interface that is made to resemble an app store. Every game has a little text blurb explaining the story, but also when it was made and what features have been adjusted to make it as authentic to the original release as possible. There are little achievements and challenges, such as getting a high score in Kosmo Spin or getting all the clocks in Beat Sneak Bandit. But I was also happy to see a few prototypes and other extras included, which is still such a rarity in the games industry. To see cancelled ideas and prototypes here in playable form gives some great insight into how Simogo approaches game design. It’s the cherry on top of this already clean and expansive collection.

I am almost sure that there is a game for everyone in this collection. Whether you’ve been following Simogo since their mobile games, or only played Sayonara Wild Hearts, each of the titles on display is such a great encapsulation of what has made this studio so unique. It’s not just a documentary showcasing the history of the studio, but this is Simogo pioneering a way forward: presenting a path for the preservation and (re)appreciation of games made for mobile devices. These types of games, more than any other, are so quickly lost to the annals of history. But they are important in their own right and collections like these give them the respect they deserve. I simply had a fantastic time with the Simogo Legacy Collection. It is everything one can expect from a collection celebrating a legacy. My hope is that other studios are taking notes and can learn from what Simogo has achieved here.

[This is how you preserve a legacy]

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TalkBack / Simogo Legacy Collection (Switch) Hands-On Preview

« on: November 23, 2025, 11:00:00 PM »

This is how you preserve a legacy

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/hands-on-preview/73460/simogo-legacy-collection-switch-hands-on-preview

It is rare for us to consider studios before the point of their breakout success. Perhaps it is human to put art in the context of its creation. We tend to like neat little boxes like genres that are ultimately more a guiding tool for categorization rather than saying anything about the work itself. But studios and their creators often have long histories before their notable breakout hit. In the last few decades as development has become more accessible and platforms malleable, these histories often get lost. Perhaps a studio signed a deal with a big publisher who delisted the game because of a licensed soundtrack, or a game is destined to be buried alongside a platform for which it was exclusive. I think the biggest graveyard of them all might be the enormous output on smart devices and mobile in the 2010’s. So many developers published their first games for iPod Touch, Android and iPad. Utilizing the many features of these devices that were at the time incredibly enticing to play around with. Remember a time before battle passes, microtransactions and free-to-play? A lot of these games were just that. Fun games based on simple gameplay ideas.

Yet, as platform holders have tightened their grip using arguments like security and required updates, a lot of these games have simply disappeared. Even worse, researching these games in 2025 is a hellscape with dead webpages, links to sources and publications that no longer exist or no one ever bothering to document these smaller apps. I’m bringing all this up to exemplify how rare it is to see developers return to their mobile roots and try to preserve their legacy. That is exactly what Simogo seems to have focused on with their upcoming Simogo Legacy Collection. This is a treasure trove filled with unique games that have had their interfaces and unique control schemes preserved.

I’ll leave the in-depth analysis of these games for the full review, but with the Simogo Legacy Collection you will get a lot of bang for your buck. Included are the full versions of Kosmo Spin, Bumpy Road, Beat Sneak Bandit, Year Walk, DEVICE 6, The Sailor’s Dream and SPL-T. Each game is completely different from the last. From the score-chasers such as Kosmo Spin, SPL-T and Bumpy Road to the narrative-heavy titles like DEVICE 6 and The Sailor’s Dream. If you only know Simogo from Sayonara Wild Hearts and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, you can see so much of what shaped those games in this collection. The writing in DEVICE 6 is vivid and descriptive in a way that reminded me of how Lorelei does so much of its worldbuilding without any words. Or how the songs in The Sailor’s Dream tell a narrative, which was also done in Sayonara Wild Hearts. And then there’s the lovely surprises like Beat Sneak Bandit, which I had never heard of but is a fun rhythm game where you need to sneak around in tune to the beat. The collection brings all these titles together and makes it great for pick-up-and-play sessions. It brought me back to the early days of playing around with an iPod Touch. Back then I was just downloading so many apps to find a few gold nuggets.

Yet it is the presentation that feels like the glue that brings this collection together. The menus are designed like a phone or tablet, with each games resembling an app-icon. Opening the app looks like viewing the store page, featuring a description of the game as well as the small tweaks and additions made to the experience for this collection. It feels like such an appropriate choice to present the games this way. It configures your expectations ahead of time, so that when these games require different inputs they don’t come out of nowhere. In addition it helps to let the games speak for themselves. You aren’t seeing any out of place tutorials or notifications during gameplay. It retains the authenticity of these games in a playable form.

The most care and attention has been put in the controls. Virtually every method of interaction has been preserved to cater to any play style. For me the most natural style is using the Switch like a handheld device. You can hold the system vertically and rotate the entire screen of the game. Ideal for Beat Sneak Bandit that uses the full width of the screen. But for those who want to keep the Switch horizontally, that’s an option too. Motion controls, joystick and buttons, multi-touch and yes for the Switch 2 owners there are mouse-controls too! You can adjust every individual setting such as the cursor speeds, sensitivity of the mouse controls, and even the appearance of both the left and right cursor. Using both sticks to control two cursors takes a bit of getting used to and is required for games with multi-touch support, but in essence it retains all the features from the original releases.

I think that Simogo has cracked the code with how to preserve mobile games in the most authentic way possible. This collection isn’t just filled with a ton of quality of life features, but contextual descriptions, adjustable settings and even unreleased prototypes for some of the games. I’m still working my way through a few of the longer games, but I can already say that if you’re looking for a collection with a ton of variety, history and many truly unique games, Simogo Legacy Collection is a game to keep an eye out for.

Simogo Legacy Collection releases for Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 on December 2nd. The game will have a free upgrade to the Nintendo Switch 2 edition for owners of the Switch edition of the game. Be sure to check out our interview with Simon Flesser, co-founder of Simogo as well.

[Ubisoft Brings Out the Big Guns]

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TalkBack / Assassin's Creed Shadows (First Impressions) Nintendo Switch 2

« on: December 01, 2025, 03:00:00 AM »

Ubisoft Brings Out the Big Guns

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/73520/assassins-creed-shadows-first-impressions-nintendo-switch-2

The rumors turned out to be true, when Ubisoft revealed last month that Assassin’s Creed: Shadows would come to Nintendo Switch 2 in early December. This marks the first third-party AAA release on Nintendo's latest console for a game that was released that same year. With the review code coming in hot, we only had the past weekend to go over its performance and graphical adjustments. While it’s too early to give the game a full review, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a great, but compromised fit on Switch 2.

Shadows marks the first new mainline Assassin’s Creed game running natively on Nintendo hardware. While Odyssey and Origins were available as cloud service games in Japan, the series hasn’t been seen on a Nintendo system outside of the occasional last-gen port, such as Black Flag and the Ezio collection. The gameplay in the series has shifted quite a bit since then, forgoing its static combat system for a more dynamic and immersive style. Set in a gorgeous rendition of feudal Japan, Shadows sees you start the game out as Naoe, a Shinobi who has to watch as her father gets brutally murdered by a group called the Shibakufu. As she sets out on her quest for vengeance, you run into the black samurai Yasuke. The duo form a secret organization to keep Japan safe from the tyranny of the Shogun and try to take out the Shibakufu.

This is a notable shift for the series in that you can choose between two very different styles of gameplay. Naoe is ideal for the stealthy approach. She can grapple up buildings, move quickly through the shadows, and take out enemies from afar with a wide ranging set of tools. Dealing with crowds of enemies becomes a problem, however. That’s where Yasuke comes in. As a big brute with a lot of power in his attacks, you can not only make every slash of your katana hurt, but also storm through enemy gates and throw subtlety to the wind. This dynamic is a lot of fun to experiment with and the quests are often designed to allow for multiple approaches. Will you come knocking down the door with Yasuke or get in and out quickly with Naoe? Their voice performances are stellar in both English and Japanese.

If you’ve played a modern Ubisoft game, most of what Shadows has to offer will be pretty straightforward. You can find quests by roaming around the world, using landmarks and tall towers to scout the areas. There are many branching side-missions and objectives to freely explore the wonderfully designed world of Shadows. The Assassins’s Creed series is most well known for attempting to bring an authentic historical world to life and they’ve excelled here. Japan here isn’t the picturesque parade of forests, mountains and temples you may expect. The villages are dirty, the people rude and more often than not the brutality of the Shogun era is on full display. Take Ghost of Yotei or Tsushima as a point of comparison, with their almost painter-esque and serene approach to what Japan is ‘supposed’ to look and feel like. But here in Shadows the dirt and unpleasantness make those gorgeous vistas, architecture and nature hit all the harder. It is a world that invites you to get lost in. But unlike other Assassins’s Creed games, here it doesn’t feel like a checklist of stuff to do.

I had already put in several hours in Assassin’s Creed Shadows on PlayStation 5. Carrying over my save file through Ubisoft Connect was instantaneous. I could immediately continue where I had left off. That said, the Switch 2 version visually is absolutely a downgrade from the PS5 version. Framerates and loading times can be inconsistent, especially with larger lighting effects and groups of enemies on screen. Yet, I had a fine time playing through the game in docked mode. Most notable are the menus, which take a few seconds to load in, especially when moving between different tabs. I also had a few notable bugs and glitches, resulting in the occasional software crash. Ubisoft is still updating and optimizing the Switch 2 version in the coming months, so I do hope that these kinks can be ironed out. The biggest visual setback is in handheld mode. While the game is playable fine enough and the framerate can be a tad more stable, the resolution drops significantly. I reviewed Star Wars Outlaws a few months back and I can’t say that it looked as rough on Switch 2 as Shadows does here. The scope of Shadows is much larger, but it is a shame that it looks as if someone rubbed vaseline on the lens to get the game running in handheld mode.

Still I will add that it is wonderful to have a ‘next-gen’ assassin’s creed running on a Nintendo Switch 2. Ultimately that choice will come down to what you are looking for. If you have other systems at your disposal, I’d still recommend playing on those if you want to get truly lost in the astonishing world that Ubisoft has presented here. But for those who love to play open-world games like Cyberpunk, Skyrim and the Witcher on the go, Assassin's Creed Shadows lines up pretty well with those expectations. Regardless of performance, I am having a lot of fun with the game overall so far. To me, it is the combination of this particular historical setting and its varied gameplay that is keeping me hooked. This world and its characters feel like the next step for the Assassin’s Creed series. It may have taken a while for the series to get (back) to Nintendo, but what a fun return it has been so far.