Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@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%.

@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.