Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

To be fair I haven't seen it in that many places, I've seen the Arcade versions of Mario Kart a lot more, another one I only got to go on a few times was the Fzero arcade machine which even had a GameCube memory card slot..... Now there older Nintendo should look at doing a at home collection of them.

@Mariotag

Maybe Lost Woods, yeah. That’s actually the one part I got super confused at when I did a second file for WOL that I didn’t finish. I think I tried to finish that run without using walkthroughs, but I gave up from how confusing Lost Woods was. I for sure agree that those two conditions with the floor being lava and the strong winds were the worst. I think the “enemy immediately gets a Final Smash” one was the worst. There’s an EarthBound Spirit battle with a character named Paula, and the Villager representing Paula had a Ness minion as an ally and the game IMMEDIATELY gave him a Final Smash that he’d use the second he got it. It was hard to avoid his Final Smash, on top of the fact his PSI attacks were stronger and he’d spam them a lot. Luckily it was a Stamina battle, but it was annoying nonetheless. The Spirits have very unbalanced and overpowered traits that would absolutely make a No Spirits run of WOL difficult and impossible.

Ah. I see! So it took a lot of points and storylines from at least two or three of the mainline games, on top of having an opening that resembled another one of the games. So the plot seemed like somewhat of a mishmash of stories from past games? I guess that does make sense for a Warriors game that you could say is technically a crossover featuring several FE protagonists interacting together on top of having some original characters sprinkled in.

That sucks, banned, unbanned, and then banned again for whatever reason with no comment on when he will be unbanned and if they’ll fix the debt thing. And he was actively subbed too? Gosh, that stinks even more! Yeah, if that happened to anyone, I would expect the person to be discouraged and paranoid about it happening again if they either got their account back or had to make a new one.

Overwatch was awesome from 2016-2019, though I lost a lot of interest in it over the years, mainly from playing Smash, Splatoon, and platformer games on the Switch. The servers seem to be less functional now, and I feel like that’s more of an issue on the game’s end than on mine. It’s not even a WiFi issue, even when I had functioning WiFi the game would take long to connect to a game, and sometimes when I’m playing, the game kicks me out and then reconnects me to the match it took me out of, and I get all confused about it. I don’t know why the servers are slower now…Marvel Rivals has far better matchmaking in terms of speed. If I search for a quick match, I get into a game only a few seconds later, and I haven’t even been disconnected from a single game ever.

Usually I don’t notice what effect something I’m doing will have on me in the future. I just tend to be super focused on other stuff rather than actual important stuff, usually because of my unhappiness and how worried I become just overly thinking about something. I become so focused on doing fun stuff because I don’t want to be stressed or do anything, but it affects me badly, and in my case, it made me really awkward in public and more antisocial, but I’m far more extroverted now, maybe a bit introverted but more chatty and a bit sociable, so at least some of my awkwardness has gone away.

I’m wondering what role Strelitzia will play in KH4, given she was killed earlier in the story and Lauriam had a bunch of visions and dreams about her before and after he found out she got killed.
When I played I was a apart of the Vulpes union, but I’m sure I chose them only because members from that union kept getting high placements on the leaderboards. I did join a group in the game, but I was apart of one before, though that specific one kicked me out because I was too inactive. There were plenty of groups in the game that wanted active players, but when I went to the next one I made sure to join one that didn’t mind inactive members. I remember the reference to KHUX in KH3! That was actually really cool, especially with the Starlight Keyblade being in the scene as well and the top players having their names appear in the scene. Unsurprisingly I wasn’t one of the top players lol. I am curious and interested in seeing how they’ll incorporate elements from KHUX into future games, given they started a new story saga an Strelitzia being in KH4, but it still sucks KHUX got closed so now some people have to watch a ton of cutscenes for it instead of getting to actually play the game and experience it. I feel like they should have at least kept the gameplay and cutscenes in tact, while having the online features disabled so people would still be able to play it. Keeping the game up would have made more sense, especially since KHUX is going to have its plot elements and characters appearing in future games and not all people will have played the game prior to shutdown.

@Princess_Lilly I definitely like Ultimate a lot, but I also think Smash U was great too, though I do agree that cutscenes and stuff would have been nice too. Speaking of that, when I saw that theater mode in Ultimate, I assumed there was going to be a bunch of cutscenes in WOL to watch once you finished it, but I’m sure after finishing it there was only 6 cutscenes on top of the opening movie and a How to Play video. Felt strange and a bit underwhelming once I finished it. Honestly, WOL would have been really cool if it was more cinematic and had more cutscenes, not to mention the animation quality was amazing. The animation stood out the most in the game’s final cutscene, “Restoration” with Galeem and Dharkon being defeated and all the Spirits traveling in a stunningly pretty-looking trail in the night sky and returning back to their worlds.Too bad the actual story mode only has 6 instances of it…

Yeah, I think one criticism Ultimate got in regards to WOL was the lack of character interactions besides the first cutscene, and if it counts, Sephiroth’s reveal trailer set during the events of WOL. I never got to try Brawl but it’s story, Subspace Emissary, I know got a ton of praise, also from the fact that the game’s cast had interactions with each other. WOL? Only the first scene and they never interact again, though think having the base game’s cast of 69 fighters interacting with each other and getting equal screentime would’ve been hard. It also sucked that Palutena’s Guidance never applied to the DLC characters at all, on the topic of character interactions.

It’s been a while since I have played a shoot em’ up. Last one I played was Enter the Gungeon on the PS4 nearly a decade ago, but I recently played another shoot em’ up on the Xbox called The Crackpet Show: Happy Tree Friends Edition. It’s fun and I like some of the humor and weapons you get during runs, but I only managed to complete the first level/episode, the game is definitely challenging lol. The game is a bit niche and not too well-known, though it’s based on a show called Happy Tree Friends, which is extremely popular online. I mainly bought the game because I’m interested in the show’s characters, art style and character designs (there’s probably 4-5 characters I could name that I like in terms of their designs), though I’m not into the show’s premise of cute and kind forest animals getting violently killed and harmed in each episode. From what I saw in the game and show however, the game is less violent, which was also a factor in me buying it.

If it does count, I played an indie game called Pikuniku a few years ago on the Xbox apart of Game Pass, though it’s on Switch too! It’s short but fun, on top of having pretty funny humor, a nice art style, and a random storyline that adds onto the stupid comedy in the game. I’m a fan of games that have completely random storylines and plots and focus on being really funny and sometimes as dumb as possible. I usually don’t play indies though. Usually it’s retro games from the 1990s-2000s.

@Pastellioli I forget how I got through the Lost Woods area. I don't think completing it would be outright impossible, just unreasonable.

Yeah. Fire Emblem games, especially the classic ones, tend to start as the war starts, right as it reaches close to home. There isn't a huge amount of variation, and it shows. The plot was sorta like, what if all these characters got pulled from their worlds because insert evil being here?

Yup. He went through the wringer. It's no wonder he doesn't trust them, and in my case, I'm really starting to distrust the idea of these groups doing good by my digital games, which sucks, cause it's a whole lot easier to get games digital.

Yeahhh, I played during that timeframe too. If it's worse now, I don't wanna think how bad it'll be if I go back. Other games are something to get into. I need to work on my backlog a lot. Marvel Rivals sounds promising from your description.

Honestly, I'm the same. I can't let myself get lost. A lot of anxiety could hit me at any time. Of course, my social skills being lacking doesn't help either. Good that you've gotten better!

I played Vulpes too! The party I was in was called "Simple and Clean", which eventually got spinoff parties. It required discord. As for Strelitzia, the KH4 trailer, and followup content explicitly described that new place as both "the opposite of reality" and "A sort of next life". That'll be pretty interesting. They really need to rerelease both this game's story, and the one from the insanely boring gameplay Dark Road.

Also, agreed with the Smash Ult cutscenes. Major step down from SSE.

@Anti-Matter Yo-kai Watch 3 definitely looks fun, but I never got to play it…I think the premise and the game being set mostly in America absolutely seemed interesting, as well as there being Merican yo-kai instead of all the yo-kai being Japanese. I unfortunately missed my chance to buy it, since I focused a lot on the Switch when the game came to America, and now the game is extremely expensive to get with the eShop being gone. I do think you are right about 3 being more fun than 2. 2 is fun, better than the first one of course, but 3 seems to have way more content and new features that I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed. I do hope that I can try it one day however, because I still remember Yo-kai Watch and love it!

I can’t remember my playtime for Yo-kai Watch 1 and 2, but I remember my playtime in 2 was aclose to 100 hours, though my Medallium is mostly barren despite the time I put into it. Only around 90 of them, which is kind of funny for the amount of playtime I put into it.

I am expecting the next Animal Crossing game to carry over some of the same features from New Horizons in it, one that I’m expecting to come back is the time being unchangeable, also because they are now fully aware of there being people who cheat by changing the time. The accessible terraforming and building in New Horizons I do expect to come back as well. Basically, I think they’ll reintroduce a lot of the new features in New Horizons to make the next game more accessible, easier, and more fun for everyone. I don’t really expect some of the elements from previous games, like villagers randomly moving out whenever they feel like it, to come back.

No, it’s been a while since I last played a game at an arcade…it’s been a decade now or nearly a decade. I remember playing this game called Bubble Bobble at a game arcade section at a car wash a few times. It was fun, and it was cool that a car wash did afford to have a few gaming arcade cabinets there. You seem to be playing a lot of really fun arcade games! I like rhythm games too, but I haven’t played Dance Dance Revolution. i usually like to play rhythm games on my phone where the gameplay is tapping the screen at the right time, but one where the gameplay is by dancing seems fun and something I wanna try one day.

@Mariotag Lost Woods is pretty difficult when not using a playthrough. When I tried doing it again, it was a lot of walking around and getting lost and getting stuck, and whenever I thought I found a new path, it led me back to the same place again, on top of the map being pretty foggy. I do think completing a no Spirits run on WOL is possible but would be extremely difficult. It’d be impossible for me, given that a lot of the conditions for most of the battles are terrible and make the enemy overpowered.

I see, and the plot did seem to be more like a crossover thing than an actual new story. I’m assuming people probably thought the plot of Three Hopes was better than the first Warriors game, given that Three Hopes got mostly better reviews and reception than the first Warriors.

I honestly wouldn’t trust a company if that did happen to me, but I think a lot of people would be like that if their account with a ton of game data, time, progress, trophies/achievements and purchased games got banned and went poof, especially if that company played a role in their account getting banned.

The game was way more functional back when it released all the way to 2019. It was around 2020 I stopped playing, but I only went back to it two years ago in March, though it’s shocking how much worse the server quality got. If the game just had awful internet and it stayed persistent, my interest in playing it went down. To check if the game was badly performing, I always went into the testing range and if the game kept lagging I’d give up on playing, which happened far too often. My experience with it back in December was catastrophic. Matches would lag really bad, I’d be kicked out of matches, I even got banned from playing for a minute because of how much the servers disconnected me, and I lost matches. A LOT of matches, and it just sapped all the fun out of Overwatch for me, though what didn’t help was I chose to play it after the release of Marvel Rivals. My experiences with Overwatch back in March and November 2023 were more functional and actually fun, so I don’t know why the internet quality went down.

Marvel Rivals is fun! I had far more fun with it compared to Overwatch, besides Rivals having actually functioning servers. You should try it if you feel like it or get the chance to. I haven’t played it since February though.

I am being a bit more focused now luckily, though a lot of stuff I do distracts me from my issues and how I act. I tend to unfortunately be a bit unaware or zoning out since I’m thinking of usually insignificant things in my head, or I’m having extremely obsessive thoughts that I can’t easily let go. It was like that a few days ago, but it was super frequent back a few months ago, though now I’ve become less like that luckily.

The group I joined didn’t have a Discord, but I can’t remember the name of the group, though it was a packed party, albeit a majority of the group members became inactive. It was only two or three members that were occasionally active. So it seems like it’s sort of like an afterlife of some sorts and something kind of fictional? That would explain why she’s alive. It’s been a few years since they last talked about KH4…I’m curious about the story and I definitely want answers to that world they showed off, but who knows when they’ll reveal more on it, I’d assume it’s not close to completion at all unfortunately. Oh yeah, I actually thought Dark Road was extremely boring. It was the only part of KHUX that still had gameplay, mainly because Dark Road’s story was unfinished by the time KHUX was closing and they wanted to finish it, but I wasn’t even that interested in Dark Road compared to Union X. The card swiping gameplay wasn’t fun compared to the medal-based and tapping gameplay in KHUX.

Ultimate’s cutscenes were in my opinion underutilized. The animation on them is gorgeous and impressive, and yet there are only six of them in the game, on top of the first cutscene being the first and only time you see the fighters interact with each other. I probably would have liked the mode more if it had used its map far more better, the battles being more fairer and being varied, and the inclusion of more cinematic cutscenes, and I just wonder what the point of the Movie mode was given there was only 6 cutscenes (if you do all endings), the opening movie for Ultimate, and a How to Play video. It’s especially disappointing given how exciting and hype the opening cutscene is with introducing the main threat, Kirby being the sole survivor, and having to save all the fighters in order to take down Galeem and later Dharkon.

2025 Checkpoint (5/7/25):

.....wow. Just...wow. It's been a crazy month.

The Switch 2 reveal, of course, happened and.... man, it's just been a roller coster. The game reveals (Switch 2 3D DK before 3D Mario? Kirby Air Riders? Crazy!), the hardware and features, and, yeah, the pricing. It's... been something. Don't think I'm getting one at launch (didn't pre-order), but I'm getting one at some point. Despite everything, I'm looking forward to DK Bananza, Kirby ATFL DLC, and the upgrade packs have reminded me that I should replay BOTW.

Elsewhere in my life, my church did a big music experience for Easter. It was narration of the death of Jesus, using numerous collections of footage across different media (Passion of the Christ, The Chosen, etc), with songs in-between narrations. Really good, and genuinely moving

Also, I hit big on yard-saleing! I was having a conversation with someone at one of the houses I went to, and he told me he had GBAs! He brought them out, and I bought both for $25 each. Amazing find, am I right? Now I can play my copy of Sonic Battle. It also came with a copy of Super Monkey Ball jr., which was neat.

The guy said there was some othe Xbox, Wii, and Playstation games around there too, so maybe he'll have some other good finds? We'll see.

Current gaming schedule:
Okay, so Brothership has officially taken a backseat. It's a perfectly fine game, but it was taking me too long to beat/play. So instead, I've played and beaten 2 other game: 20XX, which is a Mega Man inspired rougelike (good game), and Portal 1 on Switch. I was waiting for Companion Collection to go on sale, it did, and I used my remaining Gold Points (R.I.P) for a bonus discount.

I REALLY liked Portal 1. I played the main game, played the bonus maps, then I played the main game again for achievements. Great writing, atmosphere, and gameplay. Can't wait to play Portal 2 (single player campaign, I've played co-op with my friend).

Currently, I'm playing Super Monkey Ball jr. It's amazing how they made a fully playable Monkey Ball experience for the GBA. It's pretty good! Definitely gonna beat this one for my end-of-the-year tier list.

2025 Commitments check-up:
Nothing to add, unfortunately. Still need something to help me move out, and there's still some games I should play this year. But it's okay, there's a lot going on. Speaking of which....

Final remarks:
Okay, I'm going to mention this because of how important this is. So my church is having a massive event in June called Win Your World. It's June 5-8, and we believe it's going to bring a outpouring of the evangelic spirit. Meaning: I'm gonna be busy.

After I finish Monkey Ball, I'm not sure what I'll play. Maybe I'll go back to Brothership? We'll see.

And lastly, I'll leave y'all with this: to those concerned about the state of the game industry, don't worry too much. There will always be options with how you buy games, you probably already have lots of great games already to play, and there's lots of great stuff in older generations of gaming. There's more to life than games (not trying to say anything), so don't fret to much about it.

Love y'all, and God bless!

Note: Don't mind the dolphin in the picture, that's just a KO Transformer 😉.

Got a chance to clear up a misunderstanding and it went exactly as I should have expected. The other party didn't understand literally anything, threw some insults at me and then sayonara'd into the distance.

But that was kinda cathartic. Clearing up vile people's negative opinions' days are over. Now I am at peace knowing they are not literate enough to understand anyway. Looking at birds from the balcony is time better spent.

@Pastellioli I will answer you on the weekend, when I have more time. Not ignoring you, just don't want to leave a half baked answer

@Princess_Lilly Gotcha! Take your time

Also, sorry about the misunderstanding with the other party. That sucks

@Pastellioli Yeah, I forget if there's hints or not. I barely recall things from then.
And no spirits better be doable!

Yeah. It was very much a crossover, which didn't reach the heights of Hyrule Warriors. Regardless, I liked the highs that style of gameplay offered. Most of my time was on the "Adventure maps".

I mean, yeah. It's only natural. Also, I looked up Playstation's customer support line. The best number to call was praised for letting you talk to an actual human being 45% of the time, with 6% of customers having their issues resolved. (Here, not Australia) It's incredible.

So, Overwatch's big company made it worse? Checks out.

Yup. I can imagine Marvel Rivals being good. My only issue is my internet. 3Mbps sucks like you wouldn't believe, especially on uninsulated cables.

As someone with OCD, I relate heavily to that.

Shame your group became inactive, but at least the group requirements didn't burn you out! By the end, I had so many overpowered medals that could oneshot the story, it felt like nothing could oppose my setups. And yeah, KH4 appears to mostly take place in "The opposite of reality, or Unreality". Where we can find some significant characters, likely including Cloud and Sephiroth. Because it's been defined as the opposite of the reality from prior games, we may well see some different themed worlds we wouldn't otherwise. Dark Road's design genuinely sucks. At this point, your exp doubles as your currency for getting new cards, and any levelup, which you outright require to continue the story, takes hours of sitting there, watching Xehanort wipe out heartless. It's the single most boring thing I have ever played.

They really squandered a lot of opportunities with Smash Ultimate. That's one of my ultimate issues with it.

Yeah, so, had another few days where I was focused elsewhere, and seeing the times when you comment, I'm curious if you're a late night person like me, but in the US, or if you're in Eurpoe and the like. (Timezones rather than assumptions)

@Mariotag Yep, and honestly, now I kind of don’t want to do a second run of WOL from the unbalanced Spirit battles and how much of a letdown the mode was in retrospect. A handful of the battles in WOL were unbearable.

I recall more of Hyrule Warriors than FE Warriors. That definitely wasn’t a bad game, but if I had to choose between Hyrule Warriors and FE Warriors, I’d pick the former. I think there the crossover with all the Zelda characters managed to mesh together better, and I kind of don’t know why…

Wait, so their customer support line doesn’t always let you talk to an actual human? I kind of have issues with customer support lines that don’t do that and ones that rely on automated responses instead, since they aren’t always helpful and don’t fully resolve your issues. Not that I’ve had any particularly had experiences with that, but I recently had issues with a rhythm game I was playing (game kept freezing when I was going to play a song) and I had to text its automated customer support and it didn’t help at first, so I wrote my issue a bit more in depth to the developers and got a written response from them. Their message had more possible solutions to the issue I had, and it was more helpful than the solutions provided by the automated customer support line since actual people wrote that response to me.

Yeah. On top of that there is the bad battle bass system, and they did make all their heroes free to play again, but it’s mostly the bad internet and game servers that make me not want to play it. It disappointed me a lot, given I liked how the newer heroes like Kiriko and Juno played, but with how the servers acted last time i played…no, I really don’t want to go back to playing it since it’s been like that every time I played OW. Rivals is fun, but I do get having internet issues. Honestly, I think when I play games, it’s better for me to not play it at all with bad WiFi instead of attempting to play it with spotty WiFi that goes back and forth in quality and significantly affects my fun with the game.

I don’t really mind that the group went inactive. It did suck, but I played most of the game solo, plus the group didn’t really have anything going on besides a few members sending messages on the in-game chat. I remember KHUX had a mode where you played with other players online and worked together to defeat Heartless, which was fun. I did have some good medals (one I remember the most was a KH3 Riku medal) but the enemies got far more harder for me so I didn’t finish the game in time for the shutdown. Yeah, plus the world shown in the KH4 trailer looked really different from the ones in previous games. I remember it looking far more realistic.

All Dark Road’s gameplay is is just picking cards from a random deck, sometimes combining them and tapping and flicking to attack. But I think what also made the gameplay boring is the fact you don’t explore the world or run around locations like in KHUX and the other KH games. All you do is just tap or flick and then move on to the next world when you win. It’s crazy, because Xehanort is one of the most important and interesting characters in KH, so you’d expect the one game that centers on him would offer more in terms of gameplay on top of the story, but it doesn’t. There was even an option for the game to auto play Dark Road for you instead, but was there a point in them having that feature?

Yeah, I still love Ultimate but how WOL was handled with the Spirit battles, lack of interactions with the characters, and the wasted potential with the mishmashed map, on top of the fantastic cutscenes being underutilized, unbalanced Spirit battles, awful RNG on the Spirit board and the poor online play are my main issues with it. The Spirit aspect is great in concept but mostly stinks in execution, but the actual fighting gameplay and the fighters are still great.

I usually like staying up late since it’s the only time in the day I get time to myself, but I have been trying to go to bed earlier now. Two nights ago I stayed up till early in the morning and really regretted it, since the next day I was tired and yawning a lot.

@Pastellioli Understandable. I want to play it again, but am rather fearful. Kinda reminds me how I feel about KH3. Do I wanna find all that stuff again? Nope.

Hyrule Warriors simply meshed together better, as you said. It wasn't a bunch of characters from across the timeline being isekai'd, rather, you got to visit, and interfere with those pivotal points. The original characters played in nicely too, even ~~Anal~~, I mean ~~Hatsune Miku~~, I mean Lana. (That will not get old.) The only thing that really bothered me about HW was that some characters were noticeably more capable than others, and you really felt it when a less capable character got a mission. Sheik? Just put on her invincibility barrier and brutalize stuff. Agitha? Gets some of the hardest missions in the game, and is quite hard to learn and control. Also the later DLC maps are insane...but that's besides the point.

Yeah, I was looking at some article that listed statistics. I've yet to meet someone who got a bot, but apparently, it's a thing.

I still wanna play Kiriko. My problems with internet issues don't end at quality of play. Simply having a game downloaded will have it auto update worth days of nothing else functioning online much at all. I already suffer this with Genshin.

From the moment that one Kairi medal showed up, the powercreep was set in stone. Also, yeah. "Together". Damage carries over is all. I remember most of those being either I get wrecked in one hit, or my attacks constantly do 1 damage, with no hope of me or my opponent being knocked out, when the enemy has several billion HP. And yeah. The world looks a lot more realistic. In contrast to the franchise's "reality", the franchise's "unreality" looks a lot more like our reality, which has interesting implications. Btw, my group booted me, specifically choosing to have their vote when one person who notably supported me was not there. My charge was "being annoying".

Honestly, agreed. And the reason for auto-play would be for gaining levels. I really found Dark Road the single most boring game I've ever played. Even the likes of edutainment and cdi surpass it.

WoL was pretty much one of only two major single player focused features left, and that killed my motivation on the whole after a time. They squandered it. And I'd actually argue the characters are unbalanced, with older fighters largely being weaker.

I can relate. I used to be able to get away with staying up late, but now for some reason, it takes 12+ hours for me to feel like I've had enough sleep...

@Mariotag Plus, I think all the characters in Hyrule Warriors still have medieval European looks and designs with them all, so they blend in together despite coming from different games, whereas I thought some of the characters in FE Warriors kind of didn’t fit together, but it was mainly the Hoshido characters having feudal Japan-inspired designs and the rest having more medieval European designs. I don’t know, HW’s story and characters meshed far better, and although it’s still kind of a crossover, its story and missions were really fun to play.

That’s really crazy that there are statistics for that. I wonder, why don’t they just have both an automated chat bot but also have actual humans behind customer support you could message/email if the chat bot doesn’t have the right answers to whatever issue you have? Doesn’t make sense that they’d have some customer support phone number where you could randomly be matched with an actual employee of a bot instead of just having employees on the line.

Oh yeah, I do sometimes get troubles with game downloads with the internet. Sometimes the game can download or update too slow. It’s happening a lot with some games on my phone actually, but I think it’s a combination of sometimes bad internet and my phone being an older and slightly outdated model.

It is interesting to see the new world is more like real life, compared to the more fictional and cartoony look of the original worlds in the other games. It’ll be interesting to see what it means, and if the world’s realism actually means something. Also, you got booted because they thought you were “annoying?” That’s really stupid. I don’t know how they came to that conclusion, but I’m assuming in KHUX it was common for group leaders kicked players out for stupid and nonsensical reasons. I’m trying to remember, but didn’t being in a group in KHUX give all the players apart of it benefits when playing? If so, of course it would make certain players act like that. I can remember being kicked out of my first group one day, noticing it when I got to the town square after the loading screen and saw my keyblade wielder walking around the town alone, but I don’t know why I chose to join a hardcore group that wanted all its players to be as active as possible. Thankfully there were plenty of casual groups that didn’t mind if their players were inactive, and I found those ones were kinder. I stuck to the second more casual one until shutdown, but I wish I did pick another casual party that was more active. Party felt empty with how many of the players became inactive.

Yeah, it wasn’t fun. Maybe one of the most boring games I’ve played ever, and it’s just so not fun gameplay-wise. Pretty sure I only managed to complete 3-4 levels and then didn’t play it anymore. The gameplay completely took me out of it, and if it did have the same or similar gameplay like KHUX and let you walk around freely, then maybe I would have played more Dark Road because then I’d actually be having fun.

I am hoping that if the next Smash game has another adventure mode, that it actually feels like a story mode and avoids doing what WOL did, but I’m wondering if Spirits will come back or if they’ll be a one and done thing. WOL was so disappointing and wasted potential with its concepts and the massiveness of the map and story. I do get that…there have been complaints that the DLC characters are overpowered and can be spammy, but it feels funny with me saying that because I main two DLC characters, Hero and Banjo, the latter is notorious and hated by others for having a spammy moveset with two different projectiles and a move that makes him invincible for a few seconds and can be spammed five times in total while being pretty strong. I never really played as the older fighters besides Mario this one time, and I do think it was really hard to defeat other, more newer fighters. Pretty sure I lost playing as him that one time.

Yeah, I did used to have better sleep schedules in the past, but now I need to get back on that. I’ve been yawning more and getting far more tired lately, plus it’s going to do damage to my health if I don’t get enough sleep.

I'm going on vacation this June! I'll be flying to see my aunt, uncle, and cousins. I'm super excited! Probably won't go on Nintendo Life too much as a result, so I thought I'd let you all know. Tagging @Sunsy about this too.

@Pastellioli It really is one of life's greatest blessings. Sleeping is incredibly important for our health, and it's such a wonderful feeling to be sleeping on a bed. Yeah, I love listening to vintage jazz. The one I posted in that music thread was from the YouTube channel Relaxing Land. I do like listening to a decent variety of music, but I think jazz might be my favorite now, at least in terms of "real" music. I love game music as well, of course. A lot of Mario games have great music, to give an example.

That's strange about Union X. Just for seeing cutscenes and changing your avatar, huh? I would have been upset about it if I spent money on it too. I've not played a Kingdom Hearts game as of now. I wouldn't mind at least trying out the first game. I nearly wanted the collection on the Switch... but too bad it turned out to be a cloud-streaming game. Hopefully we'll see a native version on the Switch 2. (But please, no game key cards...)

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see icons based on GameCube games. Would love to have a render of Mario grabbing a star in Mario Party 5's box art. I think I saw that the Switch 2 will have a rewind feature for N64 games, as well as a CRT TV screen mode.

Ohhh, that's understandable, having a lot of things in New Leaf already. I don't have that feeling personally - when I start running out of steam in a game, I'd be all ready for a brand new entry. Though in this case... I'd need a Switch 2 first, then the games themselves (the next Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, etc.), and then I'm golden. I could see the next Animal Crossing coming out in a few years too.

Oh gotcha, it's its own thing pretty much. Didn't know they got inspired by Doraemon, I've heard of that show before, but I've not seen it. The yo-kai can talk, huh? That reminds me, I've seen Digimon when I was a kid years ago, and I remember that they talked too. Quite different from the Pokemon anime, lol, where they'd all just say their names, except Meowth who could speak in full sentences. Yeah, there are quite a few games I like replaying, I have a lot of old favorites, and I can be a bit indecisive on what I want to play next. I'm unsure about replaying any games on a massive scale though, like Breath of the Wild. Maybe when I get a Switch 2, I could toy around with the Zelda Notes feature, but I'm in no rush. I've already finished it and once again, it's a huge game. Same with Tears of the Kingdom.

Ah yeah, I'm reminded of Yooka-Laylee from that Rare discussion. That was made by some folks who worked at Rare, right? I'm sort of curious about Yooka-Replayee, isn't that supposed to be a remake/remaster or something, with some quality of life improvements? If it is, I'd like to try that out. I've not played the original game, just played Impossible Lair.

Wouldn't that be lovely. As somebody who loves platformers, that would be great to have the game have more platforming to balance out everything. Just the button-mashing(?) is my only concern. I'm sure it'll be a good game overall. It looks like it's made by the same folks that made Super Mario Odyssey, which is a game I loved. This is a game I do want to go in without spoilers for sure, same with Mario Kart World. Despite my concerns, this is the Switch 2 game I'm looking forward to the most. It would sting pretty hard if I found out something major about the game before playing it.

@Pastellioli yeah I heard that Sakurai wanted to "punish" people who leaked the cutscenes. So yeah, the game was made deliberately worse due to one creator's personal feud. It's a very very weird stuation. The situation with the DLC characters not getting Palutena's chatter just shows lack of polish.

Yeah, subspace emisarry is supposedly the best story mode with full... story. I don't even think that all characters should get screentime, just a few most iconic ones, like team leaders. Link, Mario, Pikachu, etc. And a couple of funny animations would do. But I think we will have to wait a bit for a new Smash game because they can't possibly top Ulti now. Their IPs they can cover, but all the others? The licensing must have been a nightmare. But we'll see. They did a crazy thing in Ulti, maybe they will go even bigger. I can't even begin to think how on Earth they would achieve that. On the other hand, if they go smaller, they will likely try to introduce some gimmick for the players not to feel like it's just "worse ultimate". But for now, nothing has been announced.

Ah, I played the gungeon, it's nice. I'd also like to try pikuniku. And the 90/00s games? I am right at home with them, I am currently starting my Nth Morrowind run.

Oh and that misunderstanding - why is it that the only people who don't have to apologize for anything feel the need to

But yeah now I am free, no more energy for fighting pointless wars

Hoping to get to replies this week, I've just been having too much fun playing Freedom Planet on PC. Haven't played it in years, have it on Wii U as well, back when the Wii U eShop was a thing.

@MarioVillager92 Cool, have fun when vacation time comes!

Today is Vesak Day.

@Sunsy Thanks! My flight will be on June 14th and I'll be staying over for a week. I'll be busy as a bee with prepping when it gets closer to that date, lol. It's been ages since I last played Freedom Planet... I'll have to dust off that game sometime since I do like the classic Sonic games.

@MarioVillager92 You're welcome. Sounds like a plan. Yeah, recently I wanted to play an indie game and I remember I had Freedom Planet on both Wii U and PC (friend gave me the PC one as a birthday gift 10 years ago using GOG's gift feature). I never beat it until last week, I beat Lilac's adventure and loved it even more. Story even had me in tears. Was playing the PC one since it was right there on my computer.

Freedom Planet spoiler: "Nobody... hurts... Milla!" That line alone hit hard. So satisfying to beat Brevon.

Edit: lol, I got a GOG ad with Freedom Planet on it... gg Nintendo Life.

@Pastellioli Hyrule Warriors was a big deal to me. I did eventually get burned out by the time I was up to the third edition of the game though. And yeah. Styles matter.

Well, Sony just doesn't seem to care? They don't make it easy to reach them!

Yeah. 3Mbps is a pain. I simply don't use steam, partly cause of that. I know full well if I open steam, half my library will want to update, and I can't start any of the games until I do so.

Yeah! It's an interesting take and evolution. And, idk why people do what they do. The discord was prominent even after the game shut down. Ppl do tend to find me annoying. So it makes some sense... But it was infuriating the way it happened.

Dark Road might actually be less fun than Superman 64. There. I said it.

Yup. I wholeheartedly agree. SSE was possibly the best Adventure Mode Smash has ever had. Like, props to Melee for having the first one, with an interesting early choice/easter egg influencing how it progressed, and props to Smash Run for being fun, until you realize there really is only the one map... WoL is just wasted. And yeah. The DLC characters, and even some newer ones have been OP since DLC started being a thing.

Tired is a thing. My pattern has been so far off I've not been able to reply till recent without sacrificing something. Hoping I actually sleep tonight!

Btw, what's your take on the "new" practices Nintendo has taken up? I'm fully aware they added that to the user agreement to combat piracy, but being real, that ain't gonna stop it. It'll just mean more emulators and less actual hardware, cause when you throw out the ultimate in accessibility, with your choice of quality and appealing entertainment, it is gonna be a thing. But saying they can brick your system just if they feel like you might've messed up? That's rather far imo. Knowing a certain friend had to abandon his PS cause of stupid stuff makes it known to me that things can and will go wrong.
I feel like Shuntaro Furukawa is the new incarnation of greed. Step aside Wario!