Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Aside from Fates story being dull in Birthright, it’s one of my favorites (under Awakening and Three Houses, of course). Everything else about the game was spectacular. The maps and strategy in particular. Gameplay was the pinnacle of the handheld series. And dare I say even rivaled Three Houses, though it was pretty different. Both great in their own way. Conquest is where all the good maps were though. Some of the best maps in the series were in Conquest.

I treasure my 3-in-1 cartridge. Still sealed on display, and an open one on the shelf for actual use with all my save files copied over to it (since it had 9 save files- 3 per game).

And I’m loving the new Yooka-Laylee. It reminds me of DKC Tropical Freeze Top. Classic Rare platforming built for speedrunning. Love the idea of challenging the Impossible Lair right away.

I seriously hope not. My wallet begs for mercy.

September directs are inevitable, so if the SKUs are for anything else I'd be hugely surprised. I'd expect most of them to be mostly for December to March though at least, since that period is currently empty and we won't get another full direct til next year most likely. Please no more September / October releases, this is way out of hand already.

And since we're on the topic of Yooka-Laylee, I'm so glad to see the IP might manage to turn things around. It had a lot of potential with the first game (though it really needs to tighten up it's identity), so a top notch game for the series would be great.

DKC was always the masterpiece, not 64. The 2D classics hold up much better than the 3D ones

With that in mind, this new Yooka-Laylee looks like it could achieve masterpiece status. It has the potential to chase DKC Tropical Freeze. The original 3D Yooka-Laylee was just a decent nastolgia trip, but never came close to masterpiece status.

2D platformers is where their focus should remain going forward.

edit
Kotaku has a really high quality review of Oninaki. The first video on the page is a video review of what’s written on the page, and I do recommend it.

https://kotaku.com/oninaki-the-kotaku-review-1837427492

Pretty pumped for yooka 2 myself. Might choose that over a hat in time if they both drop around the same time

On the subject of Fates, yes I'm enjoying Awakening a lot more than Fates, which was the first FE I played (and never finished).

Then again, I'm also starting to realize I didn't actually know how to play back then.

@JaxonH I'd like to see them tackle 3D with Yooka Laylee again someday. We hardly get any 3D platformers at all these days, so I'll take what I can get. But perhaps a trilogy of 2D games before the next attempt at 3D?

I'd love a new Sly Cooper or Ty the Tasmanian Tiger or Banjo-Kazooie too, but for various reasons none of those are likely to ever happen.

@link3710 A new Ty would seem perfectly possible if the remastered version sells well enough, no?

@gcunit Yeah, it's the most likely, no doubt. But the whole reason their having to kickstart the remaster is because Krome has no money (EA was the ones who funded and made most of the money off the original releases, so it's not like Krome's ever had the money to finance their own titles). Krome was basically broke only a couple years ago. They're recovering but... it's going to take a little luck to get a new 3D platformer from them, possibly including finding a publisher to back them financially.

Or maybe the remaster will sell enough to finance it, can't act like I actually have a clue what their finances are like beyond what they say in interviews.

@Ralizah @JaxonH @Ryu_Niiyama Coming at FE as a non hardcore fan, everything about Fates was just a miss to me. The story got butchred to split it the way they did, so much of it felt so forced, uninteresting, contrived, and generally awkward. Half of it felt like an excuse to incorporate as much simulated incest as possible, and it went sooooo deep into the Dragon/magic lore of its own that it kind of lost the whole "saga of clashing armies" that defines FE's feeling. The whole time it felt like none of the events actually should be happening. The first 9000 hours I wanted to break through the forth wall and strangle my hero for still not figuring out what side is what, I still can't figure out why Nohr was a civilization consisting only of goths and goth-lollis with an air of overt sinister design and nature, and 100% dark magic users, yet the entire royal family seemed completely unaware of any evil intent or that the king was seriously massively off his rocker and seemed much more interested in bedding their step-sibling than why a kingdom full of dark mage wyvern riders in imposing black death-like garb is following a king to every insane decision ever, and a bunch seemingly lucent royals and commanders seem unaware of what's going on and are entirely unable to attempt to communicate this. You can't buy that kind of stupidity.

Story contrivance gave way to two other problems. Birthright battles were simply boring as all getup (and went on and on too long) on all flat square grids. And Conquest battles and maps were so overwhelmingly difficult, while it might be the "best iteration ever" for the super hardcore who live, sleep and breathe FE, like JaxonH and a large Japan audience, it was effectively unplayable for us casuals. (I just pressed through it on easy just to see it....and the story wasn't really worth it.) Birthright at least I could play, but battles were not nearly as engaging as Awakening was, which really let it down.

I think if you're a super-hardcore FE fan, you'll have fond memories of Conquest for it's ultra-challenging maps. But if you're not on that level with FE there's not going to be very much for anyone else to like compared to most other entries that strike a much better balance, with a much more coherent story, without trying to shoehorn the game into 3 SKUs.

Cant wait for Fuze 4 on Switch! Coding and sharing on the switch will be great. However, I either get this or Dragon Quest in September. My wallet begs for mercy!

@NEStalgia
But if you're not on that level with FE there's not going to be very much for anyone else to like compared to most other entries

I see a lot of people who liked Fates. Some more than others, but Fates has a pretty big fanbase actually. And I think that comes down to the fact that sure, the story was lame. But since the stories were never exceptional to begin with it's not that big a loss. And it's still somewhat entertaining, even if flawed.

And the gameplay was so finely tuned, it was a joy just to play the maps. I'm actually not super good at the game. I always play on Normal mode, for example. Conquest was harder than Birthright, but it wasn't brutal on Normal mode. A fair challenge but nothing most people would have issue with. Hard may be another story but most play Normal.

I think the incest thing is a moot point since you only pair who you choose to pair. So it's only a thing in the game if you choose for it to be.

But the maps in Conquest were truly glorious. I remember being in this cavern with wind that would blow everyone a few spaces each turn. Stuff like that you just dont see in any other game in the series.

Something I find rather creepy about it is how they forced the child units to work similarly to Awakening, but without the benefit of time travel.

These are just people they literally threw into a pocket easy bake oven universe to live alone and miserable until they were useful for combat or too inept to survive alone.

And it’s not like Awakening where the kids are conceived at some undisclosed point in time in the future, here these marriages come with an instant mating ritual attached.

So are they making a Sunshine remaster? What do people think?

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/08/random_nintendo_pos...

That is the sort of foreshadowing Nintendo tend to do. Why would they use the word 'sunshine' otherwise? They'd surely know people would make that connection.

I have high hopes for Yooka 2. I'm glad they're going to make the game heavy on 2D stages. I was REALLY disappointed with the first game; felt super clunky, hit detection was weird, movement and moves felt floaty...gah...all horrible sins for a 3D adventure game.

But the sequel is looking a bit better. But if the character weight remains the same, I just can't do it.

And that was probably my biggest criticism of Fates. The goofy shoehorned time travel children mechanic. The dull story? Sure, that sucks. But it would have been alot better had this not been forced into it.

Of course, we all know the shortcomings of Fates. I simply feel the good outweighed the bad, and despite not being my fave Fire Emblem, the immaculate gameplay and map design (even the DLC maps were better than most maps in other games) was more than enough to make up for it.

@Dezzy They used both Odyssey and Sunshine so I'm thinking either Odyssey DLC or Odyssey 2 announced in the next Direct with Isle Delfino as a kingdom. There was that Odyssey map in 2017 that had Isle Delfino on it.

@Grumblevolcano

I don't think they've ever done DLC that long after the main release.
It'll be another game if anything. I think we're definitely getting Odyssey 2 anyway, because it sold really well and it makes sense to reuse the engine and some of the assets for a sequel (ala Galaxy 2).

So Isle Delfino kingdom seems possible. I'd really prefer a Sunshine remaster though.

@JaxonH Huh, I'm surprised to hear you're not "hardest mode only" material in FE! I really found Conquest to be "challenge mode" in general. I felt lost early on, but similarly, in Birthright, I felt like it wasn't really a strategy game at all (Dark Crystal looks to have more interesting strategy battles than that!)

I remember that wind cavern. I remember cursing a lot during that wind cavern. That may be the point I just decided "aww, eff it, I'm restarting in easy"

Story/world wise...I mean it was just so bad. Short of Senran Kagura I never say a game world/story is all out bad. Bland, boring, derivative, sure...bad, that's a rare seal of disapproval for me. But they made such a hoopla of the novelist they got to write the story....and I was floored how shoehorned it all was. The unfortunate thing is if they hadn't tried to split the game into 3 greedy parts, I think the story might actually have been good. But they kind of broke it with the "3 paths" thing (and dragging the "plot twist" they already told you in the marketing out for 1/3 the game.)

Gameplay wise though, I still feel like Birthright was boring, Conquest was, though creative, too hard for average (or worse) players, and...honestly I don't know about the DLC, after the first two I was so burned out on the game by that point I didn't care and stopped playing. But more importantly battles were long. Most FE games, most strategy games in general have a sort of short & sweet pacing of battles. I mean, yeah, it's long, it's a strategy game, but generally they have a pacing to them. Fates battles seemed to just drone on and on, not with exciting nail biting combat but positioning parties forever with endless spawning enemies. I'm not far enough into 3H yet to say for sure it doesn't go that way, but for now, I can say the pacing seems more like I'd expect in the genre. I suck at the genre, but I always find at least the first half of the games addictive. Not with Fates though which turned me off early.)

@NEStalgia There is only one paring in the story that is incest unless you are counting westermarck effect, but considering EVERYBODY knew but Kamui, I don't think it exists on both sides. I do headcanon that Kamui is more likely to fall for a Hoshido sibling after finding out they aren't related...but at the same time they isolated Kamui on in Nohr...which i felt like it was partially to eliminate any thoughts of a sibling bond beyond the title. As for Garon, people follow nutbag leaders every day...that is art imitating life. Half the atrocities committed in real life were because people were too "patriotic" (whatever that means at this point) and too scared to say no. So that seemed like standard game RPG/JRPG fare to me.

I enjoyed the maps on all three routes but I just wanna play more fire emblem.

The biggest issues I had with Fates was the childrealms (they should have done a gen gap rather than trying to redo Awakening without the time travel), the way the ultimate villain was handled...(they tried too hard to make him a puppeteer but did a mediocre job at it and they hamstringed themselves with Kamui's heritage...half of that should have just come out in the beginning. Also the heartstring pull with Kamui's mother was too soon, from a realistic perspective meeting your mom that you haven't seen since you were an infant would have prompted a disconnect and not the "awakening/ crisis" that happened. Should have made Kamui spend like a year there as a diplomat/plant. The ultimate villain was a neat idea...it just got stretched badly.

I felt like Nohr's whole deal escalated too soon no matter what route played; it didn't really feel like these two nations had been at war for decades and more like Nohr was just on a warpath...which makes Garon look a little cartoon villain silly (even though there are dictators just like that). My other issue was the awakening characters...for people that were sent there for a reason...it was hard to glean that from the game, so it just felt like fanservice...shoehorned fanservice. Otherwise most of the characters were written well enough (again not amazing but not as horrible as people like to imply) I will admit to being annoyed that Camilla wasn't a romance for both sexes...because she was very obviously Kamui-sexual. And it makes her yandere-ness make more sense if that was an underlying motivation mixed in with the psudo mother/oldersister/Kamui is her berserk button personality. Her armor is absolutely stupid though she would have been amazing if she had armor like Titania. No sane woman that is top heavy would ever wear a leather belt in between her breasts like that... I chafe just looking at her. Sex appeal for men is cute but not if you are going to get shot and killed because you left a very vulnerable part of your anatomy open. Don't wear armor then.

That being said I really felt like there was a lot of borderline abuse and torture going on with the siblings of Nohr...I think Garon was really cruel to all of them and they all had a touch of Stockholm Syndrome. Some were worse than others, so I feel that was also part of the I will follow my noble father no matter what. The only character I honestly disliked was Takumi...I would kick him down a flight of stairs (if I was mean like that).