Topic: Switch Lite vs 2DS XL: Looking for advice

@Magitek_Knight on that note - 3DS is probably the better choice when it comes to third party exclusives! Most of the games I listed are multiplatforn or Nintendo-made. (and third party exclusives are become less and less frequent each generation, except for pure handhelds)

@Magitek_Knight BotW is more akin to something like Skyrim than it is Ocarina of Time. It's a radically open world adventure game, with a complex physics system, dynamic weather that actually affects the gameplay, a fully interactive environment, survival mechanics (you have to stay warm in cold region, hunt animals and scavenge for food, etc.), and map design that constantly tickles your curiosity.

Here's a trailer:

It's one of the most highly-acclaimed games ever made. It's not everyone's cup of tea (especially some people who love the formula of older Zeldas), but regardless of how you end up feeling about it, it's an essential title.

If you end up playing and loving it, you should know that a direct sequel is also in development for the Switch:

What I will say about the Switch is that, if you're willing to buy multiplats and want to play console-scale games in handheld mode, there's nothing else like it. As a home console, it's... OK, but as a handheld it feels almost futuristic.

@Ralizah Hmm, I'm not sure if that's positive or negative. I tend to struggle with open worlds. I found Skyrim empty and dull, and it took me forever to finish MGSV despite loving Metal Gear. But it depends heavily on the individual game. Will give the trailers a watch when I'm not at work.

@Magitek_Knight I guess that's dependent on what you don't like about open world games. Most open worlds are just places with lots of space to separate the various quests and locations and whatnot, and the actual act of navigating them is a waste of time, imo. BotW addresses this by being a game entirely about the open world: surviving it, learning its secrets, learning how to use it to your advantage, etc.

The downside of this is that it's about the furthest thing in the world from being a heavily story or setpiece-driven title. It's all about immersing you in this setting and allowing the emergent, moment-to-moment gameplay to sweep you away. But this broadly comes at the cost of a strong story focus or the sort of large dungeons that used to define the series. The open world itself is the dungeon, so to speak.

So, you mentioned JRPGs. What I will say is that, if you like Atlus games like SMT or Persona, then 3DS is THE platform to get. But there's more JRPG diversity on the Switch. You have DQXI, multiple FF games, Romancing Saga, Xenoblade Chronicles, Tales of Vesperia, Octopath Traveler, several Atelier games, etc.

Both!

Get 2DS XL now and treat yourself to Switch Lite on Christmas! Though, I kind of recommend the original Switch because of the gyro controls (some Zelda puzzles are just so much more fun with gyro!).

The main advice I will give you is "be open-minded!". Pretty much all of major Nintendo games are absolutely brilliant and you will love them if you'll be open-minded and give them a chance! You just need to let yourself have fun and not think of what someone's going to say.

@Ralizah I guess with BotW I'm just gonna have to probably sit down and play it for an hour or so and see if I like it. I suppose I need to make a friend that owns a Switch, at least one on this side of the country. :/

I'm not huge on the SMT games but of the games I had on my old 3DS SMT Strange Journey was the one I played the most. (I also had a couple of Castlevanias and the first and only Pokemon game I've ever played). At this point I'm thinking I may go with a DS family system and get a standard Switch as opposed to the Lite at a later date but I'm still kind of mulling it over.

@Shonenmon I don't know anything about gyro controls, is that like motion controls?

I'll try to be open minded. I feel like I've given most of Nintendo's franchises a fair shot over the year. Super Mario World and F-Zero are great, I also like StarTropics and Earthbound. Metroid I really like. Zelda has never quite set a fire under me. The only ones I will say I don't care for are Mario Party, Mario Kart, and Pokemon.

@Shonenmon Just an FYI: Switch Lite has gyro.

@Magitek_Knight Gyro controls = Motion aiming. It's brilliant, and second only to mouse aiming in terms of accuracy.

@Ralizah Pardon my ignorance but how would that work with a handheld, since you don't have a TV to shift your controller around and aim at?

I'm picturing light gun style aiming.

@Magitek_Knight You just shift the handheld around slightly to aim. The movements aren't large at all, so it's not disruptive. Gyro is generally used to fine tune your aim after making large, coarse movements with the right analog stick. It works extremely well once you get used to it.

@Ralizah All right, that's interesting. Completely out of the realm of my past experiences.

@Magitek_Knight Yeah, it's utilized very rarely in Playstation games (even though the DS4 has a perfectly functional gyroscope; have you ever tilted your DS4 around to select letters on a digital keyboard? That's gyro). Interestingly, the online Switch fanbase likes it enough that they'll actively request its additional (as an optional feature, of course) to shooters like DOOM, Wolfenstein, Resident Evil 5, etc.

@Ralizah I've tried the touchpad to enter text and almost immediately went back to the D-pad. I had no idea you could do that with the PS4. Kind of surprised the functionality is there at all considering how little anyone liked Sixaxis.

Anyway, I don't plan on playing many shooters but I'd like to check out that functionality.

Again expecting some flames:

After watching the BotW trailer I get the strong feeling it's not my kind of game. That's a lot of empty space and it doesn't look like there's a way to traverse it quickly.

As for the survival aspects, if there's no way to disable that I should probably avoid the game entirely. Still, I want to give it a try at some point to see if my gut is wrong. I've gone in expecting to hate games before and ended up loving them.

In open worlds, I find I like a restricted, more focused open world like that in Bloodborne, more open in a 3D Metroidvania sense than "here's a hundred square miles of nothing you get to cross slowly" - there's less breadth of options for how to interact (ie get sidetracked) and anything you uncover in a new area you explore out of sequence can still help you along whatever you're currently doing. If not this, then at least an open world with a limited number of places to go, like in Final Fantasy VI- the world is open, but there's a limited number of places you can go and you're still working toward the goal of recruiting your party members and building strength for the drop on Kefka's tower.

They're two opposite ends of a spectrum: a restricted open world with a vague goal but some mild railroading through the use of powerful enemies as gates, and a very broad open world where you are still guided by a purpose.

Long tangent, I apologize.

@Magitek_Knight If you ever get the chance to try it, it might be a good idea, but if open space and survival mechanics bother you, then, yeah, you'll probably want to pass on BotW. It's a game with a TON of open space. Moreso than most open world RPGs out there.

Not every game is for everyone. I didn't enjoy TLOU or Bloodborne, personally.

Have you ever played any of the DS/3DS Etrian Odyssey games? They're dungeon crawlers that make incredible use of the touchscreen: basically, you have to make a map of your surroundings as your journey through long and twisting labyrinths filled with secrets and dangers.

@Ralizah That's my thing, I'm usually willing to give anything I haven't tried before (provided it's not a direct sequel, I've tried enough Assassin's Creed games to know I can't stand them) and I haven't tried a Zelda game in close to two decades. My 2nd-favorite Final Fantasy is one I initially disliked (VIII).

It's weird, I think TLOU may be the most overhyped POS I've ever played (It's a Walking Dead fanfic in a mediocre shooter package, I don't know why anyone else can't see this). Bloodborne is weird in that I only played it because it was on PS Now and I wanted to mock another overly difficult Souls game...and got hooked in the process. It really is the 3D Castlevania I personally always wanted.

I haven't played Etrian Odyssey, but I do like the mapmaking idea. A lot of old PC RPGs you pretty much have to do the same...but with graph paper. Which is less fun than being able to do it on a nice convenient screen. I'll look into those for sure!

@Magitek_Knight You hit the bulls-eye: EO started out as a huge love letter to and modernization of classic dungeon crawlers like Wizardry. The map on the bottom screen is actually styled like a sheet of graph paper. You draw the walls, note doorways, secret passages, treasure, traps, secret locations you'll probably want to come back to later, enemy movement patterns, etc. Most of the games go for an old school approach where you create a party of custom adventures from scratch and venture into the labyrinth to level up, find treasure, kill bosses, complete quests, suss out environmental puzzles, etc. with a very organic method of storytelling that eschews cutscenes and setpieces almost entirely. Some of the games are different insofar as they combine the gameplay of the mainline games with full on character and story driven JRPG structures. If you like Persona games, the two Persona Q titles on 3DS combines characters from various Persona games with pure EO-style gameplay.

You know, FFVIII is, to this day, one of the few I've never tried. That and FFII, which I hear is terrible. I actually have a digital copy on my Vita, but I never seem to get around to playing it.

TLOU... I don't really get the appeal. Granted, Naughty Dog's animation work and technical wizardry are peerless, but I've always been weirdly unimpressed with highly realistic visual styles in games. I mean, why play a game that's an approximation of real life when I can just... go outside and talk to people and experience the real thing? I like games because they allow me to see and do things that are impossible in real life. And that extends to art-style as well. I'll opt for something gorgeous and stylized like Okami, The Wind Waker, etc. over realism any day.

People praise the story, characters, and setting, but it's difficult to imagine being impressed by it unless it's your first-ever work of apocalyptic fiction. The characters aren't terribly deep or compelling, and the plot/setting are just iterations of ideas I've seen in other mediums a million times before.

I wanted to like Bloodborne. I thought I would. So much so that I actually bought it digitally at launch in 2015 (bad idea ). My biggest gripe with it besides the lack of a map of any sort (I never knew where I was in that game, and I hated it; I have a very poor sense of direction IRL as well) is that the game felt kind of... unfinished? There was barely any sort of plot. Characters (the few there were) all spoke in short bursts of cryptic dialogue. There were no quests to complete, puzzles to solve, etc. It was just combat and really dark, mostly empty environments. It felt like a great combat system in want of a finished game.

Glad you enjoyed it, though. It's a highly beloved game, so I'm sure my issues with it are mostly a "me" problem.

@Ralizah Etrian Odyssey is definitely on the list, and making me lean hard towards a DS now. Dungeon crawlers can be a lot of fun and the one game I really committed time to when I did have a 3DS was in that category (Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey).

Final Fantasy VIII is a polarizing game with a steep learning curve. I recommend giving it a try, but the Junction system is definitely weird at first compared to something straightforward like Materia or the Job system. Final Fantasy II is pretty much straight garbage, though it did sow the seeds of the SaGa franchise which I happen to really love.
I feel like Naughty Dog makes nice looking games. Uncharted at least had a fun, Indiana Jones styled thing going on. Until TLOU happened, and then Uncharted 4 was a charmless family drama with a character no one had mentioned before taking the spotlight and cutscenes that went on 50 percent too long. And Sony seems to be pushing dull game mechanics with "dramatic" and "cinematic" stories like this as seen with God of War completely changing genres. I'm not a fan of this.
And I completely agree on stylization vs realism. Realism tends to make a game look dated. What looked realistic in 2000 looks like a blocky mess now, and what looks realistic now will probably look silly a few years down the line. But 16-bit sprites look good as new with a decent filter slapped on, and something from last gen like Bioshock Infinite or Ni No Kuni with a very stylized look still looks beautiful sharply drawn in high res where a realistic-looking game like Call of Duty looks instantly dated to us.
As for Bloodborne, if you don't like it, you don't like it. I like to think I'm mature enough now to look at things that way and hope others are equally forgiving. There are plenty of acclaimed things I outright don't enjoy.

However at least some of the things you dislike, I do enjoy, at least given the setting and genre. In a horror setting I really prefer vague stories with little explanation given and lots of unnerving atmosphere on top. I feel it's creepier when your mind has to fill in the gaps. For this very reason, the original Silent Hill is probably my favorite horror game of all time. And for me at least, Bloodborne's lack of map added to the suspense. But I can see why someone else might find it to be annoying.

@Magitek_Knight
Btw, Nintendo Switch also have some Ununsual games that might attract you if you open minded.
Let's say ARMS, Nintendo LABO, Ring Fit Adventures, 1-2-Switch.
If you also have interest with Casual games, you can consider Disney Tsum Tsum, Sport Party, Go Vacation, Little Friends: Cats & Dogs.
If you like Casual Open World game, consider Yonder the Cloud Catcher Chronicles.
I heard you like 16-bit style graphics ala SNES, try 99 Vidas, Evoland: Legendary Edition.

@Magitek_Knight Between SMT and Etrian Odyssey, I think it's fair to say Atlus is the modern master of the dungeon RPG. Even Persona 5 is a huge step up over 3 and 4 in this department (actual dungeons over randomly generated hallways, that is).

It's pretty rare to meet someone else who prefers Silent Hill over SH2. Granted, SH2 absolutely has the best story in the franchise, but it feels more like a slow-burning Lynchian fever dream most of the time, and I always preferred the raw, freaky atmosphere of the original. Those dated PS1 textures and character models make every enemy you happen across look sort of blank and impersonal, and it's creepy as hell. And, of course, the voluminous fog throughout the town is the greatest example of technical limitations inspiring design brilliance in the medium.

And that music. Listen to this industrial, pulsing cacophony of a song, for example:

My first experience with the game was on a PS1 demo disc that came in a magazine. The demo area was the first portion of the elementary school (before the change), and it scared the wits out of me at the time (playing SH as a prepubescent tot will do that).

@Ralizah I haven't had too much time to spend with Atlus games yet outside of Strange Journey. I've played a bit of the original Persona and have started Persona V, and have played a bit of the original SFC Shin Megami Tensei through emulation.

Yeah, I love the four Team Silent games for different reasons and all are pretty great in their own right, but the original is my favorite. I feel like the low-poly, blurry texture, fog drenched graphics not to mention the kind of shaky voice overs add such a truly weird "I'm hanging out in a dream, but not my own" feeling to it. It's one of those cases where the janky nature brought on by the limits of technology and the budget actually work in the game's favor.

It's pretty rare when this happens, and the only other game I can think of where it does is Deadly Premonition, which unsurprisingly is also heavily David Lynch influenced (to the point of more or less being pastiche, if really good pastiche). Silent Hill 2 and especially 3 definitely had better production values and it shows, but 1 will always be my favorite nightmare.