Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@JaxonH Mobile and console markets aren't really comparable, IMO, which is why I'm not any more worried about F2P becoming the standard than I am cloud gaming becoming the norm, or even "physical games" disappearing in their current form.

F2P is doing better than ever, but, honestly, so are a lot of different types of games. As long as that remains true, I really don't think you're going to see anywhere close to a quarter of major releases in the industry go the freemium route.

And tbh if F2P can get to a place where it's less predatory and still able to make tons of money, I don't even necessarily think those sorts of experiences becoming more popular will be a bad thing. But, regardless, normal video games aren't going anywhere.

RE Genshin Impact, I'm curious to see how fully I'll be able to enjoy the game before the layer of gacha/casino stuff becomes unavoidable (traditionally, with mobile games, a fun early game hooks you before the game mechanics slowly start to bend the experience in the direction of frustration with limited resources and longer and longer timers in order to tempt frustrated players into using microtransactions; and, of course, once any money has been spent, the player is on the hook, and the more money they pump into it, the more likely they'll start to adopt sunk cost logic that turns them into reliable paypigs), because, a week or two in, it feels like a proper, high-quality open world game like BotW or The Witcher 3.

I just wish I was playing this on a hybrid system. It looks fantastic on my PC, but, y'know... I gotta have that portable freedom. It's why 3DS was my main platform before the Switch released.

@JaxonH @Ralizah I think the far future will be 3 types of games:

1. Old games - Ports, remasters, remakes, greatest hits collections (note that by the latter I mean games where the content is from old games but packaged in a new way like Mario Party Superstars and WarioWare Gold)

2. Games as a Service but longer term support - Mixture of freemium and paid games but the overall goal being the same, for a game to be supported for like 10 years with the GaaS model.

3. Indie games - I think the traditional approach of releasing a game for a certain price and sometimes being given free updates and/or paid DLC for shorter term will live on in indie games

@Pizzamorg
I don't even care with AAA Western games.
I don't even like F2P games either.

Actually, I guess it is more of an Western thing, than anywhere else. Nintendo, Konami etc can be anti-consumer, but they do it in other ways. It is really companies like Bungie, Ubisoft, EA etc that charge you full price, to then pay for chunks of content at a time that really you technically you really already paid for with your initial purchase of the game - or is the 70 dollars now just for the privilege of the menu screen?

That stuff has started to creep in elsewhere - Tales of Arise came with some very shady MTX, but it does often feel less often you buy say a JRPG and find a huge advert for a massive MTX store on the opening title screen of the game.

GaaS is obviously where companies want to go (not sure about Nintendo yet) but I feel like ISPs will have to step up their game first. NA is an important market and internet speed and access is a range so insanely wide it’s almost baffling.

I actually have now given up on SMT 3. For a second time I'm stuck, frustrated and a guide doesn't help because of all the teleporting nonsense which muddles the ability to follow a guide. Like if you like this stuff, that's fine but to me there's no fun in this it's just infuriating. I like the core mechanics with the demons, the battle system and so on, but the game is always half at arms length with the worst level design I've ever seen. I don't see the point of constantly slamming myself against the wall of this game, if all iegt in return is misery.

@Grumblevolcano Thanks for the feedback. My main reason for asking are the actual board games, so it's good that there is little lag.

@Pizzamorg 😂Did you give up on the last dungeon? There's a section in the last dungeon that goes so bananas with the teleporters I actually used a guide to get through it (whereas I made sure not to consult internet help for the rest of the game).

Thankfully, Nocturne is pretty much the only mainline game I've played that goes nuts with the teleporters and annoying dungeons. SMT I (not even legally available in the U.S. at the moment, mind you) has some labyrinths with teleporters and poison floors, but they're only a fraction as annoying, and mostly avoidable. IV and IV: Apocalypse have normal dungeons without puzzles and gimmicks. V, this far, doesn't even look like it's going to have dungeons (although Atlus has said they'll be in there).

I gave up on the park, it was going okay for a while but then I got to the section with the High Pixies who use the two formations and you have to climb the towers to see where the Pixies are. Like I just couldn't work out a path through this, with the constant formation changes it just seemed every path was blocked.

I could maybe stomach if they were labyrinths, even if they were puzzles - the Obelisk is proof they can make intuitive, fun to solve, puzzles but that was the one time I felt that way. The rest of it is just layers of poor design, layered on top of one another.

Like how every location is just the same corridor stacked over and over again, in different directions. So whenever you get teleported, there is absolutely nothing to anchor or orientate yourself. The Obelisk includes this, and had this been present everywhere, I probably would have stomached this more. But being constantly teleported to the same jumble of white doors over and over again, going through white doors for more brown corridors and white doors and trying to remember the exact sequence to follow, while the pixies keep moving the teleporters around. It is just torture. Your brain would have to be wired completely different than mine to figure this out.

If V removes the dungeons all together, maybe that'll be a shame but if they remove all this awful level design, then it is automatically the best game in the series. I mean, even if they do have puzzles, but I am not spending every gaming session literally fighting down the urge to just scream in pure frustration, then it is already a significant step up.

@Pizzamorg Oh, Yoyogi Park. I didn't have too much trouble with it, since the fairies changing their positions constantly meant it was easy to access spots that would have teleported you previously. Trying to climb towers to survey the structure of the environment turned out to be completely unnecessary. Also, I seem to recall there being icons on the map that'd show up after you got teleported.

tbh it's mostly just trial and error in that place.

All of the footage in SMT V shows Nahobino running and jumping around large, open environments looking for collectibles, side-quests, etc. Pretty much the exact opposite of the rigid, puzzle-based progression structure of Nocturne. Early previews have also emphasized a lack of dungeons at least early on in the game.

I dunno, it just went like this for me.

I gotta go right, through this white door, take the second door to the north and then go forwards
Formation change.
Alright now I gotta go left... no wait, balls. Teleported.

Ah *****, this brown corridor has a white door behind me, not to the left, so where am I?
I guess I'll go down the brown corridor.
Formation change. Ah *****.

Oh wait, I am back to where I was originally. Aight, so I just need to do what I do before, only at the end there I... wait no formation changed, so I got teleported again. *****.

Now where am I? Am I in the same place or somewhere new? It is all brown corridors and white doors.

Well I guess I'll try and go this way... teleported.

*****, where am I now?

Formation change.

*****.

And so on forever. It could only end with me either giving up, snapping my Switch in half or curling into a ball and crying. I chose to give up.

@Pizzamorg Have you been using the map as a reference? I feel like I was fairly reliant on using the map in that place to find my way around.

But, yes, quitting the game is definitely better than snapping your Switch in half or crying. At least you gave it a chance.

I like Nocturne, but subsequent games are on an entirely different level, IMO. IV: Apocalypse is one of the best games I've ever played. Hopefully SMT V lives up to the sky-high expectations people have of it.

What was the best home fix for Joycon drift that we've found? I kind of remember something about opening it up and slipping in a small square of cardboard or something like that. Anybody have a link or quick synopsis of what they did?

(Just got Mario Party so, yea... now I really need to do something about it lol)

Maybe it is the millennial in me, but I found that map kinda useless. Like I have tried to use it a few times, but the fact that the game doesn't really let me interact with it, kinda lowers the usefulness of it. I guess I can like take a photo on my phone, so I can mark and annotate the map that way but once you've got to that point, what the ***** are you even doing.

Hopefully they port across some of the better SMT games over to the Switch, it is the only Nintendo hardware I own, so I am reliant on ports.

@Pizzamorg
only Nintendo hardware I own

Shame 3DS prices have gone up. Having a New 3DS around is really handy for playing games like Shin Megami Tensei IV, Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse, SMT Strange Journey, Metroid Samus Returns, Fire Emblem Awakening, etc.

I also modded mine to get a complete SNES and GBA collection beyond the ones sold on the eShop and given out as Ambassador perks. Also having Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission, Super Metroid, Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem Binding Blade, Fire Emblem Sacred Stones, etc is really nice. It's one situation where a 240p screen actually works really well, as the games were originally designed for such a resolution.

They were selling them for $99 a pop on Black Friday back in 2017. But now... Idk what happened. Prices are way too high.

I am just sort of surprised it is required, Nintendo have an almost contradictory reputation of seemingly releasing the same titles over and over, yet also not really preserving their catalogue at all. I guess it is more complicated for Nintendo, cause they use a lot of gimmicks like motion controls, or dual screens, or whatever else so it isn't like just booting up a 360 game on your Xbox but I am honestly surprised how many Nintendo titles just haven't made it to the Switch.

Like seemingly no brainer things, too. Like the only traditional Pokemon game, for example, that you'll be able to play on the Switch is the rereleases of Pearl/Diamond. That just seems crazy to me, given how far we're into the Switch's lifespan and that can be seen across a lot franchises/titles.

Oh does it do that in TMS as well? I was thinking about picking that game up eventually, but if it is more of this teleporting bollocks maybe I've dodged a bullet in not picking that up yet.

@Pizzamorg
Ya, but we do have a fair bit. Obviously Switch isn't going to have every good game from every past console ported over, but it has a lot. A lot of complaints have actually stemmed from so many of their best previous games being brought over (like DKC Tropical Freeze, one of the greatest video games of all time, yet that angered a lot of ppl as it was a "Wii U port". I was ecstatic. I'm playing it right now, such a masterpiece of a game. Maybe and arguably my most re-played video game of all time alongside DKC Returns.

I do think Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow could be brought over as they were on 3DS, but, I'm not gonna play those over the 4 different sets of Pokémon games we'll have by January. I don't really feel like that franchise is underrepresented (plus I have a ton more on 3DS). They're probably all ripe for remakes too, and they want to save them for that.

But ya, We have NES, we have SNES, we have N64, we have basically the entire Wii U catalog... we don't have GBA, DS, 3DS, GC or Wii (though we do have some notable titles from those systems such as Rune Factory 4, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania and Banana Blitz, Zelda Skyward Sword HD, Mario Sunshine and Galaxy, etc).

The only games I really feel deprived about are Metroid games and Fire Emblem games. Specifically Metroid Fusion, Zero Mission and Samus Returns, and specifically Fire Emblem GBA titles, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, and Awakening.

We're not doing that bad for 4.5 yrs in. And it is getting a lot better now that we have more VC systems and games coming. Though it'll never reach BC Utopia, I do think it's gotten a lot better over the past few years.

In an ideal world though, we'd see GB/GBC added to base Online service VC, with GBA/DS added to expansion pack to add value, and we'd see Switch ports of 3DS games Samus Returns and FE Awakening, and more GC/Wii remasters (which may be coming if the rumored Metroid Prime pans out).

In any case though, I don't think Switch will ever get the majority of the 3DS catalog, for reasons you mentioned. Which is why keeping a 3DS on hand is so essential. And, 3DS had far less selection overall, it's just that modding it allowed the full spread of VC not offered officially, and the 3DS/DS library largely compliments Switch rather than overlaps with it.

Tropical Freeze hasn't aged a bit. An underrated classic. Retro's best game to date.

The 3DS is unmissable. A massive fraction of its library is full-on exclusive (and will probably remain exclusive), and the level of quality is really consistent across the library. It can also play NDS games. It's the one older Nintendo device I just couldn't do without.

@Pizzamorg You don't really need to annotate it. The main reason to have it is to help keep you oriented in dungeons and, like in Yoyogi Park, see how to navigate through places without being needlessly, endlessly teleported everywhere.

The Diet Building, for example, a later dungeon in the game, would be absolutely intimidating with its visual illusions and fake entrances if the map didn't completely tip the game's hand about which doors actually go somewhere, for example.

If you're not heavily relying on the map, then it's no wonder you're so frustrated. I doubt I would have gotten through most of the dungeons in this game without it.

@CactusMan Teleportation puzzles are fine, IMO, when they're used intelligently and sparingly. Like in, say, the very first Shin Megami Tensei. I don't even have an issue with Yoyogi Park (it's an interesting idea, but the execution is lacking and too reliant on experimentation), but stuff like the section of the last dungeon leading up to Chiaki, where you can hardly go five steps in any direction without being teleported, is going too far.

I love well-done puzzle dungeons, but it's usually better if they're heavily thematic and involve riddles and problem-solving instead of making progression itself a nuisance unless you follow a specific pattern of movements that are sussed out through trial-and-error.

Oh does the map in the park show where the pixies are then? I didn't even notice, I thought I had to climb up to spot them.