Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Ralizah Which Paper Mario are considered early paper Mario? Everything before Color splash?

@Solaine The N64 game and TTYD.

@Grumblevolcano Oh, alright only those two then. Thanks

@Ralizah it's a good time. Definitely no harm in sitting down and giving it 20 hours of your gaming time.

Nobody has OLEDS except GameStop, but they are bundled with junk - $488 USD. Kind of a sleazy move, no? (I say junk because I don't want any of those things. the sd card is fine.)

Why force an unneccessary third party ac adapter with a new Switch OLED? Who does this?
I don't want headphones.
I'd never pick that case.
(the game is fine, but we don't want that game)

So disappointing.

https://www.gamestop.com/consoles-hardware/nintendo-switch/co...

Dang. Paper Mario... I think they finally got me for NSO+ or whatever it's called.

@rallydefault come on at least call it correctly.
It’s the Nintendo switch online plus 2 alpha championship edition expansion pak turbo wii

@Ralizah Yeah, I think it's partly because it's the first in the series. The chapters/worlds in TTYD were more creative I think, but I still enjoyed the N64 original. And that's coming from someone who played TTYD first. I think the first one is more whimsical in terms of its presentation, but its gameplay is generally identical.

I will say, as arguably the biggest fan of the original Paper Mario here, I don't have time for it right now. Too many new games.

I'll certainly get to it soon enough, because its been a while. Despite playing it nearly every year through the 2000s, when I did a Let's Play like 6+ years ago was my last time touching this game. (speaking of which, I did do all the Chuck Quizmo questions for it, I don't recommend doing this)

So after 70ish hours, my Pokemon Shield journey has effectively come to an end. I have cleared the main game and both of the DLCs as far as I understand. This is my most played game on my Switch so far and by far the more enjoyable experience I have had on the Switch overall, even if I thought Isle was fairly mediocre DLC content and I really disliked Crown Tundra, although collecting a whole suite of new Leggos was cool when it was all over. I also think CT has a much better end game than the main game has, I will likely be coming back to do the Adventures/Endless Adventures from time to time with my Sister just because they are fun. I guess I also maybe need to look into doing some online battles to make some use out of all these Legendaries I am getting from the Adventures.

I am sad it is over and feel like I have a bit of a void in my life now. I am not sure whether I should jump into either Diamond or Pearl, or whether I should give my Switch a break from Pokemon for a bit and play something else entirely.

@Pizzamorg Given your comment about the birds in Crown Tundra, taking a break from Pokemon would probably work more in your favour. I saw in the BDSP thread that the Legendary trio in that game is just as annoying to catch.

I think it just came as a shock, more than anything else, as Shield had been mostly free from this kind of BS entirely, which is part of why I enjoyed it as much as I did. So when CT came along it was like… oh no, here we go.

@DarthNocturnal Better than Platinum. That had 5 that ran.

Though XY was the worst offender. Had to encounter the bird 12 times at which point it immediately flees before you can even choose a move, then fight it for proper later.

It was more just a coalescing of BS. Up until that point, there was no BS in being able to battle the Leggo and the Leggo caught within a reasonable number of turns, no save scumming required. This remained true all the way through, until the three birds. Not only was the act of finding them like pulling teeth, but I had to save scum to catch them for the first time and in Moltres case, literally dozens of attempts before I caught it. There is a line there between it feeling like a challenge because it is a Legendary Pokemon to being just a ball ache. Then the icing on the cake was having to solve obtuse puzzles to get through doors to face the rest. Never once in my entire 60 plus hour journey did I think to myself “God, what this game is missing is meandering progression blockers to pad out the game without the need of any real content” but CT seemed to think that was all the game was missing.

I know it is probably considered an unpopular opinion, but the absolute best thing about Shield for me was that it had enough challenge but it was mostly friction and frustration free gaming. You could always progress and have a meaningful session - to me, that is what is fun about gaming. Wasting hours chasing around birds, looking up guides and all the rest is not fun to me in the slightest. CT just held the content away from me at arms length and added nothing to my experience in doing so, other than souring it. For 60+ hours Shield showed this kind of rubbish is not needed and then I dunno I guess they just gave in to the crybabies at the last hurdle.

I enjoyed finding the birds using the clues but the rest of the process to obtaining them was obnoxious (starting the battle and capturing). The only clue based Pokemon puzzle I remember disliking was the Regis in Gen 3 and their remakes.

I can agree to this to some degree. Had they just said go to the wild area or whatever and the Pokemon was in a fixed location, I wouldn’t have minded this nearly as much. But the addition of having to chase the Pokemon around or in Articuno’s case, having a Russian roulette as to whether it will spawn and then needing to solve extra puzzles, just was not fun to me at all. Especially as in the Moltres and Zaps case, it is just all smoke and mirrors, as they are on a fixed path, so you can just stand in place on their path and they’ll eventually just run into you. It is absolute rubbish.

Started playing Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc last night. It reminds me of Persona 4 Dancing. Just in terms of having a lot of dialog among characters. I like it.

Still no Life Is Strange listing on the eShop. I hate when games get no pre-release coverage, no screenshots, no gameplay, not even a store listing until 10am the morning of release.

Square Enix will cross mountains to promote games on other platforms. But when it comes to Switch, it's almost as if they're purposely trying to release games in secret.

@JaxonH I wonder about that too, there are countless of small games in the 'coming soon' section, but then they miss a relatively big title like life is strange. I always like to put these in my wishlist early to later see a sale more quickly, but a lot of the games i am interested in just never appear like Moon: remix RPG adventure, tormented souls, or 13 Sentinels: aegis rim. Instead, i can even see a game called KungFu kickball releasing sometimes in 2022.

As a VN newbie, am I better starting with one of the Danganronpa games, Doki Doki or something else entirely on Switch?

In terms of me, after taking a break yesterday I did another Ring Fit session, turned the difficulty down again but this time it seemed way too easy, didn’t even break a sweat. Whereas before I felt like dying after the first round of an encounter lol. Tried turning it up manually but I still can’t seem to find quite the right balance yet.

Otherwise, spent a chunk of my day playing through Mario Rabbids. I know I am late to the party to make the same old take, but man this works way better than it has any right to, right?

It is a bit modern Disgaea, a bit less punchy modern XCOM game but overall a lot of fun. A lot of the XCOM frustration is swapped out for pretty close to Nintendo first party polish, which I appreciate too. As minimal friction and frustration in all games as possible please.

It can be quite handholdy, with what feels like a much too long of a tutorial for a game that is mechanically quite simple (not that it doesn’t have plenty of other depth, but the depth doesn’t come from complex mechanics necessarily) but once you move beyond that stage, I just thought this was a joy.

The focus on constant movement, rather than hunkering down in the most secure position you can find, is both fitting for a Mario game but also can make it a surprisingly more aggressive loop than modern XCOM games, where you are creeping on eggshells waiting for the game to absolutely beat you into the floor with brutal RNG. Is it true, while we are here, that the XCOM games don’t run well on Switch? As this runs great.

As you go along, they manage to find a lot of unique personality in each character - which you can then define further with weapon choices (which are all great, by the way)/the skill trees - given that, like I say, there isn’t really necessarily a huge amount of mechanical complexity/variation, it is amazing how much the different heroes can feel different from one another.

The thing I am less sold on here is the exploration/puzzle solving. I know this is just used as a cool down between battles as otherwise the game would get VERY repetitive and I actually prefer it to all the base building/management/other RTSy stuffs used as buffers used in the modern XCOM games but that doesn’t mean the buffers here don’t feel sorta half baked, like they were tossed in at the end of development when they realised the game maybe needed some kind of cooldown. Rather than something that feels truly designed from the ground up to be a part of the experience.

@Pizzamorg Depends. Danganronpa is more of an adventure game than a visual novel insofar as it heavily integrates gameplay into the experience, whereas, I believe, DDLC is mostly a traditional visual novel in terms of gameplay. So I guess: do you want something more interactive and longer, or something shorter and less interactive?

And yes, "this kind of sounded dreadful when I first heard about it, but it's actually way better than I ever would have expected it to be" is pretty much the emotional arc everyone goes through when it comes to Mario + Rabbids. Absolutely one of the best exclusives on the system. Really excited for the sequel that's releasing next year.