Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Knuckles-Fajita Well just extrapolate what you may know of the "true ending" of XC1 and go from there.... it's a sequel...

I don't know western does things like Fallout, Deus Ex, Mass Effect. I tend to think of Western when I think sci-fi more than JRPGs. It's just that Western fantasy is almost always high-fantasy (or dark fantasy.)

@NEStalgia Yeah the true ending to a game I never played because low and behold if 2 aint grabbing me I'm not booting my Wii up for the first one.

And yeah, western RPGs do a lot outside of fantasy, but then THOSE games all kind of fall flat on the gameplay part for my tastes. I am very particular with RPGs.

@NEStalgia Haha, All I can say is I heavily disagree. That's not what makes a game bad for me. But this conversation has happened on countless message boards. People that don't like 13 won't be convinced, and they shouldn't have to be. It's all besides my initial point, anyway: If a game doesn't grab you quickly, you're completely justified in not continuing it, despite any "it gets good later" promises.

@EvilLucario That's how I feel about XC2. The game is SO flawed, and I could sit around for hours talking about all the things wrong with it (and I believe I did a good deal of complaining on here as I was playing it, especially about field skills gating me off from completing side-quests), but the strength of the music, characters, story, combat, exploration, etc. really won me over in the end.

I guess the difference is that the problems in XC2 just irritate me, whereas my issues with XCX kept me from enjoying the game as much as I wanted to.

Although both games are better than the original Xenoblade Chronicles. I just don't get the love for that game at all. Exploration is mostly pointless. It's ugly. I hate the constant visions from the Monado. I dislike the characters.

Bleh.

@Knuckles-Fajita Suffice it to say there's a lot of sci-fi in 1 that then becomes more direct sci-fi in the end. 1 was 50% fantasy, 50% sci-fi, with a sci-fi ending. You move from fantasy Bionis to sci-fi Mechonis in the second half (which the game tells you will happen right at the start.) 2 Mostly plays as fantasy & steampunk but turns back to sci-fi in the last quarter with a sci-fi rationale for the rest of the world's state. But if you actively dislike fantasy, then yeah you still have to play a lot of fantasy, but there are parts you'd find more appealing than you think.

@Ralizah sounds like you and I agree on the good & bad of XC2. We agree on many things that aren't controller shaped.

XC1 I agree, it's overhyped in terms of gameplay....the gameplay sucked and the characters were 1 dimensional. It was the story that gets it love. It would have been a better anime than a game technically. It was incoherent at times. But the sheer amount of surprising plot twists and the epic concepts and environments make it legendary. You suffer the game to play the story.

@ReaderRagfish Hmm, there didn't seem much to love about the gameplay of XC1. The combat was pretty basic and repetitive, and exploration wasn't really meaningful and quests were just MMO quests. X, and 2 I can see loving for gameplay regardless of story, but 1 seems like story was the main point, and the gameplay just facilitated it.

@NEStalgia I played about 3/4 of the way through the game, and the story was pretty poorly paced. I could go long stretches of time without too much of significance happening in the plot. Doesn't help that it starts out like some weird robot version of Attack on Titan, with lots of pathos, screaming, threats of revenge, etc.

I also hate the way heart-to-hearts work in the first game.

Oh, and Satorl Marsh. That was the first point where I quit playing the game. God, I hate that place with a passion.

But yeah, the pointless exploration is the kicker for me. The game feels ridiculously, needlessly big. It's not like there's anything to do in all that space other than collect blue orbs and occasionally fall off the side of a mountain and have to spend ten minutes getting back to where you were beforehand.

@ReaderRagfish I still really love XC1's combat, but X and 2's combat really kicked things up a notch for me. While XCX and XC2 does indeed have less character diversity than XC1 (a big reason why XC1's combat is still really good for me), individual character diversity is much better and the active offensive play is better than XC1, where Overdrive and Blade/Fusion Combos make things a bit more interesting than just countering visions and using your Talent Arts. XCX gives you unlimited amounts of builds to toy around with, demolishing any fools with gimmick sets like reflect, defensive builds, or just one-shot "I win" builds, and XC2's in-the-moment combat is pretty damn fun and can only potentially get beaten out by Melia in XC1, and even then not that much.

@Ralizah Wow what polar opposites. I'd actually say that the area right before Satorl Marsh, the Ether Mines, was worse. THAT is the worst part of the game that causes people to stop playing. If anything Satorl Marsh's beauty and music reinvigorated me on my first playthrough, and that's also where you get Dunban so combat can get much more interesting. I'd say that's the turning point of the game kicking into high gear.

@EvilLucario Satorl Marsh is a confusing slog. Pretty at night, yes, but I had a very difficult time getting through it, and kept getting chased down and killed by higher level enemies more often than in other areas.

I'd say the game doesn't really "kick into high gear" until Prison Island, personally.

@DarthNocturnal List Vikings would be cool. I think approaching supportive third parties and helping to port some of there classic games for the eshop/VC successor could be a mutually beneficial move.

@DarthNocturnal This is the same company that owns Rock N Roll Racing - the SNES classic? That's one of my favorite games ever. I already own it a million ways including the original cart, but if they released this game for the Switch I'd buy it in a flash. You're probably right about licensing though...

Fired up Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate demo, and man... I'd forgotten how good the game actually looks in person. Videos really don't do that game justice. The colors of the hunter just pop, exactly like on MH3U for Wii U.

I even noticed a bunch of comments from people also noting how the game looks much better than they were expecting from the videos. And I see what they mean. After being away from the game for a while you kind of forget.

I guess this year is gonna be a Monster Hunter - Valkyria Chronicles - Diablo - Dark Souls - Mega Man marathon.

I start grinning very time I think about it. Just makes me wanna stand up in the Colosseum and scream "LET THE GAMES... BEGIN!"

So, anybody else think there’s no Direct soon? The amount of stuff that’s been announced recently that would have fit perfectly into a Direct makes me think they’ve decided against it for some strange reason. In the last two weeks we’ve had announcements for:-

Diablo 3
Gear Club Unlimited 2
Doom Eternal
Dark Souls date
TWEWY HD date
Demos for Valkyria Chronicles 4, Mega Man 11 and MonHun
Undertale special edition
Dragonball Z Beta
Taiko no Tatsujin physical release

Chuck in a better sizzle reel than they had at E3 and That there is pretty much a Direct.

@electrolite77

Good point, I think all of these announcements combined eased pressure off for an August Direct. I still think we'll get a September Direct announcing the last few 2018 titles. NSMBU Deluxe and a handful of 3rd Party titles probably.

2018 started out kind of rough for the Switch, but it's sure going out in a MUCH stronger way.

Third party support really came to the rescue this year.

I believe there will be Another Direct about LABO Toy Con 03 Vehicle before 14 September 2018.
And also Another Direct about Paid Online Service since it will be applied after 15 September 2018.

Just started playing Okami HD. It's beautiful, but there are already a few irritations.

• The camera movement is SO slow. It takes ages to manually adjust the camera around Shiranui.
• The Animal Crossing-esque gibberish voices. Really not a fan.
• The game, in general, is really, really slow at the beginning. At least I'm not herding goats or hunting for giant bugs, though...

That was so annoying for me when i was playing through okami on pc i just had the game muted and listened to some music.
I’d rather not have any “voices” at all.

@Ralizah What's worse, the gibberish voices are very slow too. I played it last year. After an hour I still hadn't left the tutorial area, I couldn't do it anymore, and I quit.

My memories of the game are a lot better. I certainly didn't remember the slow-as-molasses tutorial.

I still feel like they're moving away from directs as information delivery. Maybe the next one will be November to showcase the 2019 games.

@Ralizah Yeah I tend to agree about XC1.....the first fifth or so was slow to awful (the mines were easily a low point for the game, you had this long area of difficult enemies and didn't even unlock the full battle system yet.) Pacing was bad, heart to hearts, I skipped most of them in the game..... it was just annoying.

I think my biggest complaint about Monolith design is that they love to create player busy work to pad out play times. Like those heart to hearts or the affinities....they present you an action or event. Conventional game design says you have to earn access to it by steady forward progress either by story or levels/stats, or building certain trees or whatever. Monolith likes creating all this busy work of running back and forth between places, doing menial things, rearranging your party lists and sorting blade indexes like you're doing SEO. Tons of menial busywork and babysitting tasks that take you away from the game and into checklisting and system management for the sake of it. If they took their solid game design and streamlined out the pointless busy work, their games would be shorter, but far solid and replayable rather than a niche even among JRPG fans.

"Third party support really came to the rescue this year"

Which.....is how it's actually supposed to have always worked....

@EvilLucario I'll agree with you for the first time in an XC topic on that one. The mines were horrendously bad, and I played it wondering if all the XC hype was just desperate Wii fans excited to have anything to play that resembled a real game. I don't recall what followed it, maybe the marsh but whatever it was, wasn't memorable at all, but convinced me there might be something solid to the game worth sticking with.

" XCX gives you unlimited amounts of builds to toy around with,"
It's just a shame it makes dolls so high risk I was always afraid to use them much

@DarthNocturnal Lost Vikings and their older games from that era they don't tend to even acknowledge they ever made. I think they purposefully have distanced themselves from it. Which is a shame, because itw as an amazing game. Also, it was published by Interplay before they were their own publisher and then bought by Activision. There's probably a whole mess of rights issues for that stuff with Interplay defunct (a second time.)