Topic: Starlink: Battle for Atlas

@NEStalgia I've only heard it reported at Best Buy. I got mine from Best Buy and while it did have the game, but the bottom of the box was ripped and the nose of the Arwing was bent.

Are you talking about the green Starfox lasers? The Arwing wings fire lasers if they don't have a weapon attached to them.

Like sr said, to get the Arwing lasers back, you’ve got to unequip mounted weapons. The downside is I don’t see a way that those lasers would be upgraded.

I wish it had online coop, as well. I played some in the waiting room this morning, and just zoomed around the first planet doing observatory missions and selling corrupted nova. I forgot headphones and didn’t want to be “that” guy, so I muted it and didn’t do any story, haha. But I’m headed to the office where it’s a different story.
I leveled up a gun, and fused some mods. I like the Mass Effect 1 aspect of modding weapons and ships!!

@redd214 I agree, I would have loved to play this in an actual network co-op setup. It's a missed opportunity for it to have become legendary, especially with Switch and wireless play! It could have been everything Federation Force wanted to be Maybe with luck, like Rabbids, if this sells well Ubi will start adding content and modes to it.

@sr_388 I think I'd take the missing game over the bent nose! @HobbitGamer yeah, it's the green SF lasers. I figured that might be the case, but: Can you actually remove weapons entirely if playing digitally without the toy? I'm not seeing a menu option for it. OTOH yeah, they don't seem so powerful....they're so fun with the charge beam and all, but I'm not sure you could play with those either. Just taking out the first extractor using them on the right wing was fairly time consuming.

So what's the verdict? On a scale from 1 to Ubisoft?

@NEStalgia Yep! I bought it digitally only. When you pause the game, hit up 'Loadouts' (should just hit A after pausing), then go all the way right or left to highlight a weapon, hit X to remove.

So; "+", "A", "right", "right", "X"

@Octane I'm kinda putzing around right now, but I'd give it an 8 so far

@NEStalgia I know! I’m hoping I can exchange it today lol

In the loadout screen, press A to “change loadout.” You can press X to remove your wings and weapons there.

I like how the Prime battles get more stages and become harder if you don't take out enough extractors first. Haven't tried attacking a dreadnought without defeating the primes first. I mean, they're hard enough fights as it is. I'd hate to be the person trying to fight one that bought a physical copy of the game and thus only has one or two ships.

EDIT:
The Star Fox crew don't seem to be part of the main story after the side mission unlocks. But then again that side mission may be taking place at the same time as the main storyline, timeline wise.

@HobbitGamer @sr_388 Thanks! I'll have to give that a try.

@Octane Too soon to tell but I'm really liking what I've seen so far. It's a Ubisoft open world, so expect a Ubisoft open world, map waypoints and all. But the actual gameplay is slick it looks really slick on Switch, and I'm amazed at the difficulty considering it's a "kids" T2L game and I'm playing on Normal, the second of 5 difficulty levels.... Ground combat is pure StarFox. Space Combat....I mean it's not Elite, Freespace, or Independence War, but it feels solid and smooth. Moreso than "Free Range Mode" (Sorry Falco, All Range Mode) in other SF games and more like a simplified space sim. I just wish I could lock on.

But in a way it can be StarFoxSouls. That really surprises me from a "kids" game. Those enemies can hit hard. I find I'm dying a lot. Of course you can buy your way through difficulty with more ships, but I'm trying to stick to an all-Arwing run for now, and I don't think that's going to last too long.

That's only true to a limited extent. It's quite likely that your 'main' ship has the best mods equipped. And ones you don't use often are likely to be completely unmodded. which can lead to a situation where as you lose one ship, it becomes increasingly more likely you'll lose another ship. Then another, then another...

I highly recommend starting off by investing 10 points into Mason, by the way. Double exp gain for all pilots is just too nice to pass up.

@GeeEmm It won’t take you long at all to upgrade your inventory space. I’m already at 50 per category. I could’ve already gone for the full 99, but prioritized elsewhere.

I've only used the Arwing (I'll tinker with others tomorrow night since I'm off Friday!!), and I'm also playing on Normal. I feel like rather than some enemies being difficult, I sorely underestimated the fact that I'm playing a real game. I was expecting combat to be sort of arcadey like Starfox. Then I went to the wrong hood and got shamed mercilessly by frost monsters on crack.
It's like shooting some pesky Geth troops, then thinking "I'll take down that big earthworm thingy no problem!"....
StarFoxSouls is definitely a smart comparison. The game isn't inherently hard, but it does want you to learn your abilities, crafting, and combinations. Oh, and being aware to move around in ground combat. I've also had no shame in flipping on the flight engines to pull a 180 and avoid death, just so I could recharge my shields, barrel to the ground and finish things off. I'm still in awe at how much freakin fun combat on the ground can beat when you start getting into it. Reminds me of the veritech fights in the Macross Plus movie.

Can the game be challenging? Yep
Is it unfair in its difficulty? Nah
Does it encourage a player to 'git gud'? Absolutely.

@FaeKnight True, but since it's a quasi-RPG I'm thinking of that like the party of any RPG: I.E. you can't afford to ignore party members and leave them leveled, you have to be sure to use them evenly and grind them a bit to have a "full powered" party.

Except Poppi. Screw Tiger!Tiger!.

But yeah it does look like trying to Arwing-it is not the way this game gets played unless you're extremely good at not getting hit.

@HobbitGamer Yeah that aspect was an unexpected and pleasant surprise: It's not just a high score chasing kid friendly beat-em up, but a real game you actually need to try to figure out how to fight in. Doing some ground battles with the first extractor it had almost a DOOM vibe as I had a shotgun like weapon on the left, and I was frantically strafing and bobbing. Not what I expected from "Skylanders with planes" It went from "fun novelty space game with Starfox vibes I'd enjoy noodling with" to "actual game in the backlog" I kind of expected to pick off a few all too easy monsters in all too simple quests and I ended up getting my rear handed to me multiple times Souls/Everspace style.

I daresay: This game is harder than Farcry 5 and AC Origins. Maybe not AC Odyssey with its own leveling structure and OP enemies, but that's just boss gating in an unfair but RPG useful way.

The start reminds me of starting BotW. Oh I see I'll just raid this bokoblin camp here, run through the controls like the game wants to present a fake challenge and just THWONK ok....I'm ok.....that didn't hurt mu...THWONK Uh yeah..so...back to the shrine.....it's nice in here.....nice drapes.

Similar. Oh, this completely non-moving extractor thing, I have to shoot out the orbs....ok comfy tutorial time, learn to shoot unmoving objects, learn the contro......HOLY HECK THAT LASER JUST TWO SHOT ME!

@NEStalgia Preeeetty much. But it does do it in such a way that I feel dumb rather than cheated. Which is... kind, I suppose?
I’m having a blast, and feel like I’ll get more out of it than I had guessed

It's definitely the hardest 'toys to life' game I've seen. It's nice that they didn't say "Oh, this is a toys to life game. That means it needs to be stupidly easy." Instead they made a solid game, then linked the toys to an in-game mechanic. And just having all the toys (or everything unlocked digitally) doesn't give you an instant "I win" advantage. Instead what happens is you die using your favorite ship, and switch to your second fav ship. Then if you get defeated again things get progressively harder as you go from ship to ship, each with less defense and damage resistance then the last one. And if you forget to repair your downed ships before doing something challenging... Oops

Okay, yes the Skylanders games do have a few legitimately challenging stages. And yet you can easily brute force your way through them by the simple expedient of "I have 15+ of the toys, thus I have 15+ lives." And that's without factoring in how broken things like the pirate ship figure are in general gameplay.

@HobbitGamer Yeah, I think I'm going to take a brief hiatus from Octopath as my "play this in between other things when I get a chance game" and do some Starlink for a while I expected I would like it, but I wasn't expecting "wow this is an actual serious game" kind of liking it.

@FaeKnight I guiltily enjoyed Skylanders and I do not know why. Nothing about it was great, but it was somehow enjoyable all the same. But it was more "entertainment" than an actual game. I'm impressed, Ubisoft in a rare move actually understood their audience

I have to say something though. Platforming in a star fighter is weird. And I mean "really freaking weird". Skimming along the ground and using your retro thrusters for short boosts higher into the air? Okay, I can accept it. But precision platforming up the side of a structure? Uhm, my star fighter can fly... Why am I not allowed to fly up to the top?

So whom here got the physical extras ship and parts? The ships are my next purchases as I got the weapons and pilots. I am going for all the physical parts but digital doesn't do service to this game. And the starter pack I got a extra pilot included. It goes like this - you give to another family member or sell back to get something back. Digital once bought no return in investment. That's the biggest downside to digital.

What’s everyone’s favorite pilot thus far?

I started out by investing 10 points into Mason for the double exp for all pilots bonus. Now I’m trying to figure who’s fun to play.

Thus far, I seem to enjoy Shaid the most. Aside from digging the whole rogue theme, Vanish just feels really fun and powerful as a pilot ability. Thoughts?

@Ryzaerian well, I blew up the arwing in an asteroid belt, so when I landed after that, I switched to Calista. Then I made a ship just for speeding in and out of sorties with Overdrive. So I’ve only used her and Fox so far. Gonna put Mason in the “tank” fighter I built for deep space fighting, so I can work towards the xp boost you mentioned.