Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Grumblevolcano Nintendo will not wait until septembre to give us more information regarding severals games they gonna release during the summer/fall season, the next general Nintendo Direct will problaby happen around june/July.

@Giancarlothomaz Like I mentioned in the Direct thread, Nintendo's set up the summer such that they could just do individual Directs. Past Xenoblade and Splatoon games got their own Directs, TPC does their own thing so there'll probably be a Pokemon Presents and the release date announcements a few weeks ago means Nintendo could do the same with something like Bayonetta 3.

The missing piece of the puzzle is Mario Strikers though, just over a month before launch and we've heard nothing since the February Direct. Is that a sign of a delay, a Mario Strikers Direct or perhaps a general Direct in May?

@Grumblevolcano
I think it's more a sign of Nintendo focusing their messaging on one game at a time. Right now they're wrapping up their push for Switch Sports, and before that was Kirby Forgotten Land.

I expect a new Mario Strikers trailer next week or the week after.

@Grumblevolcano
Actually, NoJ just released a new 5 minute trailer now

Here's some screenshots I took from the video, which also shows customizable skills such as high run speed, knockback protection and shooting power.

So I am now like 20ish hours deep into BD. The pace definitely has picked up, as it took me about ten hours to get my first two badges and then it has been almost 5 in the last ten hours, this is while also doing a bunch of other stuff that branches out from the core loop of going from town to town collecting badges.

The game has generally gotten a lot easier, however, most gyms follow a pretty similar pattern of frustration, that is getting me close to just bouncing out of the game entirely. They loop in the same way that you come out of them over levelled, practically one shot your way through every trainer on the route, one shot your way around the next gym and then one shot your way to the Leader's last Pokemon and regardless of level or type advantage, that last Pokemon will always have something to weight the battle in their favour which you can't really counter. This will force you to go away and become over levelled because it is really the only solution and then it harms the experience from there on out.

Whether it be a miraculous moment where somehow they make you flinch three times in a row, or moves that seem to guarantee you miss multiple times in a row or moves that hit as hard as super effective moves regardless of type distribution AND heal the Pokemon in the process. There is always something that makes you want to snap your Switch in half.

The always unsophisticated solution to this is to just go away to the underground, maybe move your party around, go up a few levels so you can tank an extra hit or two, to come out on top. I honestly just find this wholly unsatisfying, because it doesn't feel like you are going away, putting together a new game plan, practicing it with your team, becoming a better team and overcoming a challenge, you're just grinding to overcome lazy difficulty design. This again feels exasperated because the type distribution of Pokemon is just rubbish here, so it isn't like you can easily just go away and build teams for different occasions, you're largely stuck with whatever you have.

And like I say, it does somewhat break the whole experience in the process, as doing this then makes you over levelled for basically all the content that follows, until you make it to the last Pokemon of the next gym leader and they hit you with their latest piece of BS.

And it is a shame too, because I really want to like this game. I like that classic Pokemon formula, as tired as it may be to others, there is just something so satisfying about the loop and pace of these adventures for me. As someone who loves turn based JRPGs, I feel like at times we are often starved of new content. Almost every JRPG wants to be either real time or turn based with some kind of "twist" that makes it not really turn based at all, it feels like these days. Pokemon is one of the last bastions of just traditional turn based design, that I personally enjoy a lot.

But between the extremely lacking variety of wild Pokemon and these single problematic Pokemon that make you keep slamming on the brakes to do mindless grinding for a bit, just mean that whenever I am about to fall in love, the game slaps me back to reality.

I will say as under baked and often pointless as it is, I do kinda like the friendship stuff in the game. Even if it is more the idea of it, rather than necessarily the execution of it.

It is a central part of the anime, so I honestly can't believe this isn't taken further and made a core system of the games. When you've made a Pokemon a central part of your team and been on a long journey with them, it'd be nice to see that reflected by more than just their level - even if, like you say, all that really is here is another text box to click through.

I can't remember whether it like dodged or tanked a hit, or maybe even like countered a hit, because it wanted to make me happy but it was that that helped me beat Byron when all felt lost. One of only two, maybe three? Leaders I have beaten first time, out of 7. Like that was just a cool moment, built from spending time with this Pokemon.

Yeah the affection system in BDSP is busted. I purposely didn't fight all the trainers in order to not be overlevelled, which resulted in me being a bit underlevelled for the Elite 4 and I still won thanks to power of friendship anime nonsense. It was hilarious when my Pokemon would survive a hit and have 1 hp left, and then have it activate again and survive another hit.

Like I said, straight up deus ex machina power of friendship anime nonsense.

Haven is surprisingly good. Granted I think a lot of the game hinges on being emotionally invested in the couple (very grateful they added a same sex option) but over it’s a nice bit of game design overall.

I’m supposed to be playing Kirby. Ah well.

@Link-Hero Cool! I posted a more detailed opinion in the recommendations thread as well. I gotta say I need to pick up Furi now. I am starting to like this dev.

Sony acquiring Square Enix rumours are running rampant again, it will be sad times if Live a Live is the end of Square Enix support on the Switch.

Decided to bite the bullet and buy Mario Tennis Aces while it was on sale. While it is as overwhelming as I thought it might be mechanically, you can feel things falling into place with every match and when things are clicking, it is honestly very fun and very satisfying. Nothing like capping off a surprisingly intense, sweaty, rally with some sort of Dragon Ball Z death swing to knock out your opponent.

While I don't enjoy the core Mario games as I do not like platformers at all, I end up enjoying pretty much any other genre Nintendo seem to throw this brand on that I end up trying. Whereas other studios might licence out their IP for cheap mobile game garbage, it feels like Nintendo put a lot of work into polishing each of these titles to make sure they feel more than just cash grab spin offs. This honestly gives me a lot of hope for Mario Strikers later in the year.

I do feel very much right now like I am mostly just spamming buttons trying to stay in the game, but I can already see the high ceiling a game like this could offer for those who are dedicated and I am interested to see how far I can get with it. One thing I really like, is while the game can be pretty difficulty given it is fast paced, with a lot of things to remember and a lot of precision required, there are mercy rules. Get stuck on a boss too long, you just get like a super saiyan mode to beat the boss and move on. And online it isn't like one racket break and it is game over, like these boss battles are, so you can keep learning, keep getting stronger with the levelling system, without actually getting stuck.

Another thing I really like, is for whatever reason, Nintendo hates my internet. I play games like Pokemon and MH Rise on my Switch fine, same with every PC game I ever play, but I guess the Nintendo made 1st party stuff must use some really antiquated peer to peer system for all of their titles? As literally I never find anybody, this pretty much killed Mario Kart and Party for me. However, this just populates the game with bots. Not as fun as playing against people I am sure, but at least it means I'm not locked out like the co-op challenges and stuff when I get around to doing them.

@Pizzamorg MH Rise was the first Switch game on Nintendo's new servers, Nintendo games prior to that was on Windows 98 servers. Games with multiplayer since then are:

• Mario Golf Super Rush
• Pokemon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl
• Switch Sports

Oh my Gosh does this mean I'll actually be able to play Switch Sports online?

Wait, Windows 98 servers?! That's frankly unbelievable. It's taken them that long for decent multiplayer?

Nintendo Life reported on it back in February 2021:

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/02/nintendo_is_replaci...

@Grumblevolcano I remember hearing about this prior to Legends Arceus coming out. The fact that Nintendo servers up until 2021 were run on the same thing as this:

is hilariously depressing. So many lag spikes in Smash.... so many.....

I think you are sorta splitting hairs here and focusing on the wrong things. All we are saying is NSO was ***** up until basically 2021, when they finally went... okay, let us use infrastructure that isn't the same as an AOL online chat from the late 90s.

For many, they would just get bad performance from NSO because I have to assume it was using antiquated peer to peer infrastructure, which means you have to have a fully open internet connection that is very high speed as you are effectively torrenting the game down and up to play it online.

For someone like me, who uses hybrid mobile internet due to where I live, I cannot open my ports to the degree that NSO agrees with to allow this peer to peer sharing, so I just couldn't play any Nintendo games online basically until Rise came out.

@Pizzamorg What's weird for me is that, despite only using 1-2 bars of wifi for online games since my TV is situated far away from my broadband, I still get mostly great connections in games like Pokemon Unite, Mario Kart 8 and even Splatoon 2, the game that started this whole discussion in the first place. I guess Ireland just has better wifi than most? I mean I'll take it.

I mean it might seem fine on your end, but for all you know you're teleporting around the screen, thinking you're some unbeatable God when actually you are just lagging.

@Pizzamorg Trust me, it feels like the exact opposite most of the time: I get completely trounced over and over again. In Splatoon and Smash especially, even today I just fought the most annoying Palutena who just spammed Up-Smash and Counter constantly.... and I still managed to lose. Mamma mia....