Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

I've being playing Mario Party Superstars and it's so fun going back to the older stuff. If there was more from the GC era (both in terms of some boards and more minigames) it may have been GotY.

This is my rankings of the previous Mario Party games I've played:
1. Mario Party 4
2. Mario Party 5
3. Mario Party 6
4. Mario Party 7
5. Mario Party 2
6. Mario Party 8
7. Mario Party DS
8. Mario Party Advance
9. Mario Party 10
10. Mario Party Island Tour
11. Mario Party 9

I own Super Mario Party but didn't really get around to playing it (like with Let's Go, I get distracted by games that allow Pro controllers that Joy-Con only games kind of fall behind). Never owned 1, 3, Star Rush and Top 100.

@Grumblevolcano Have you played online? If so, how was it?

Bought Mario Party Superstars for family, will discuss experience later

@chapu2006
From my experience online works really, really good. I love it!
There are some small hiccups, but if one of the player's connection gets too unstable, the game will kick out that player and the CPU will replace that spot.
Playing Minigames I don't notice any latency. Maybe I got lucky and got a solid connection to every player I played against. Except the one that got kicked. I wonder what happend to his connection... It was fine for almost the entire game. 🤔

Seems online connections have been pretty good ever since Nintendo switched their infrastructure or whatever it was.

Monster Hunter Rise was great and I'm hearing good reports about Mario Party Superstars.

@Budda Nice. I've worried about Nintendo's Online Service since Super Mario Maker 2 but this game now seems a dead-on buy.
Thanks for the feedback.

check out all the 74 delicious foods we can cook in Animal Crossing New Horizon.

@chapu2006 My experience with a full Mario Party board match was very solid online. Mt Minigames however had lots of lag.

@Giancarlothomaz
So many food and drinks.
ACNH is going Cooking Mama. 😆

I found the online in Superstars to be, somehow, more stable than the local communication mode.

@Eel
Local seems to be unstable in general. I tried using it in Animal Crossing. It disconnected way to often, so we just used online and it was perfectly fine.

Local has always worked flawlessly for me and my brother.

Not that we've played that many games together but we have played a ton of Splatoon 2, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate and Monster Hunter Rise.

Most of the time when we want to play locally we just use one switch and two controllers. So I think this might be the first time we play an extended session using local communication…

With Superstar though, we gotta both get the exp and coins! So single console is off limits.

Being the last day of October, let us now turn our heads toward November and what the coming month has in store for us.

• Knights of the Old Republic
• Grand Theft Auto Trilogy Remastered
• Shin Megami Tensei V
• Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl
• Death's Door

These are the 5 standout releases I'm excited for.

KOTOR is a classic, and finally having an HD version designed around controllers on a hybrid OLED is so incredible, as someone who bought an m-Fi controller years ago to try and play the iPad version, which didn't work well as the game was still designed around touch despite technically supporting controllers. Massive win here.

GTA Trilogy combines 3 of the best games in the entire series (look at any ranked list and these 3 games are typically somewhere in the top 5, with San Andreas even taking the #1 spot on some). With modern GTA5 aiming reworked to include gyro on Switch, this is going to be my definitive, go-to GTA experience. Massive win here.

Shin Megami Tensei V needs no introduction. This is a game announced way back during the launch year of the Switch, and in true Atlus fashion, has kept us waiting most of the generation to finally see it. But the time is upon us, and I have to say, the game looks like they gave it the Persona 5 treatment. First HD entry, much larger budget than past entries received, and it looks extraordinary. Early impressions are saying very good things, and this could end up being one of the best exclusives on the Switch. Massive win here.

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. The Switch has no shortage of Pokémon games and spinoffs, but this will be the first "traditional handheld" Pokémon on the system. It's a formula many fans are familiar with, and it's conservative approach appeals to me as it looks clean and sharp, doesn't seem to have performance issues, yet still offers QoL improvements over the original 4th gen entry. Solid win here.

And last but not least, we have Death's Door. This is a game my brother was raving about not long back when it was still an Xbox/PC exclusive. I figured a Switch version was right around the corner, and whattaya know. Here it is. I'm not sure what to expect with this one, as I haven't watched too much footage, but I do know it's well regarded and highly praised among those who have had the privilege of playing it. Solid win here.

miHoYo really needs to get Genshin Impact on the Switch already. I held out playing it for the longest time because I'm practically allergic to freemium stuff, but even acknowledging that monetization model, it's a pretty awesome open world RPG. Borrows more than a few ideas and UI aspects from Breath of the Wild, of course, but it's very much its own creature, and it handles exploration and questing very well. And, tbh, the things it borrows from BotW only make it better. I WANT more open world games to embrace gliders, free climbing, and more stylized art styles.

So far, this feels like a game I'd pay $60 for, and I haven't spent a dime. Jury is out on whether the gacha elements become more intrusive later on, but I'm really, really impressed with it so far. I was planning on cleaning up The Great Ace Attorney 2 and Fatal Frame V prior to SMT V, but it's looking like I might just stay stuck on this until Nov. 11.

@JaxonH The combination of uncertainty about the writing in the KOTOR remake combined with the port of the original onto Switch has kinda nuked my interest in the PS5 announcement. Especially if the port ends up being well done. I don't generally care too much about licensed SW stuff, but I am looking forward to see what's so special about this game I've been hearing about since I was young.

Will likely get KOTOR and SMTV. My budget for the rest of the year is shot. So not a lot a game buying on my horizon. Got IT certs and school application fees to pay for. With them both being long RPGs though I'm not really looking forward to them in the traditional sense (excited they are releasing but realistically won't get to play until late next year sometime).

I will most likely be skipping KOTOR and Death's Door, I might also skip the GTA remaster unless it is meant to be really great - even then, I'd probably get it on PC. SMT V and Pokemon though, I am just counting the days for.

@Ralizah
I wouldn't mind playing the remake, if it were out now and it were on Switch. But... I've been waiting to play this game for almost 10 years. I really don't feel like waiting another half decade, even if it could be played hybrid across PC and SteamDeck (assuming SteamDeck is even the current system by that point- we may well be on Steam Deck 2 or 3 by the time the game actually drops). And ya, you never know how it's gonna turn out at that.

HD, controller supported version on hybrid system now = winning combination. If it's good enough I can always play the remake down the line also (but by then, Switch 2 will be out, and since the game is multiplatform it could end up on Switch 2 after the timed PS5/PC exclusivity anyways).

BTW Genshin did look interesting to me, but... I just don't like F2P games. Even when MTX aren't intrusive, it just feels like I'm getting an incomplete experience- being limited to only one character, or this or that. Cool to hear you're liking it though.

My real concern is that freemium is slowly taking over the premium gaming space, as we see more and more console quality games being released with a F2P model. If you ever look at the eShop best sellers via the search function > all software, you'll see a massive list of F2P games that are permanent fixtures above and among the top selling paid games. Ninjala just passed 8 million downloads and its not even that good. Makes me worry this is the real future of gaming. Not cloud, not rentals... But freemium.

@Ryu_Niiyama
Even for me it's too many games to play fully. Still. It's just nice having the security of knowing you own the game, and can play it whenever you want. Even breaking a long game up into many short play sessions over time, if you're enjoying your time with it, that's what matters.

I mean the future of triple AAA gaming seems mostly a "have your cake and eat it" model of charging you full price for entry but then monetising the game like it is a free to play game. As much as people claim to be mad about this stuff, it seems like many publishers/studios only become more emboldened with each new gaming cycle, so they are clearly making more money out of this than they are pissing people off, so it will just continue.

@Pizzamorg
It's a race to the bottom. Same thing happened in the mobile market. So many games, so much competition, the only way to get players to pay attention to your game is to make it free to play. And the more devs do this, the harder it becomes for paid games to compete against free games taking up people's time, which incentives more free game releases. It's a vicious cycle and we can all see the inevitable end result by looking at the app store.

The only games that won't go free to play are massive AAAA games devs feel confident enough in their marketing they can peel $70 out of players for the starter pack "base game release" and then nickel and dime them like a F2P game on top of it. And not without a good $50 season pass or two as well, that of course, doesn't include all the extra MTX content.

Not that I think we'll ever get to a point no traditional full priced games release anymore in the console market, but I could see freemium taking up 25% of the market, easily. With the "$70 starter pack + season pass + MTX" accounting for another 25%.