Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Oh my word, I just got to the area that lets you keep a Pokemon out of their ball and having Prinplup Naruto run behind me everywhere makes me wonder how anyone could have disliked this game.

@Pizzamorg Trust me, it gets even better at Empoleon.

There are some, erm, casualties from the system though unfortunately. Most notably:

@Fizza
Is that Rayquaza on Pokemon BDSP?

Haha, oh no! I still kinda love it though.

@Fizza Murder by Numbers regularly gets a 50% discount too on the eShop - last time was in March - so well worth keeping an eye out for that if you are planning on getting it at some point anyway

@dmcc0 As in down to something like €6-7? I'll be waiting on it anyway since I'm in the middle of The Great Ace Attorney and soon to be Earthbound so I'll be definitely be keeping an eye on it for whenever it does get discounted. Kind of surprised it's not part of the EU Spring Sale though, I feel like that would've been better than the umpteenth time we've had MK8D on discount.

@Fizza Yup, been €6.24 every few months for the last year - last one was probably the Easter sale or something and the next likely to be around June if it's following the same pattern as last year:

https://www.dekudeals.com/items/murder-by-numbers

@Fizza I recall doing this with my Torterra in Brilliant Diamond. Not the best move considering how slow of a Pokemon it is. Just keeps returning to it's Poke Ball every few seconds and then back out.

It’s pretty crazy the way the whole industry is slowly, or perhaps rather rapidly, being bought up by a handful of large conglomerates. I’m not sure I’m gonna like where it’s gonna be over the next 5 to 10 years.

@IceClimbers @BruceCM

Yeah, even before the Crystal Dynamics acquisition, Embracer Group already had something ridiculous like 60+ development studios with 60+ games currently in development. They've been making many similar purchases over the past several years.

Edit: My bad, 80+ studios with 216 games in development. This is before the CD purchase. Good god, lol.

Well, I saw a few I recognized in quite a long list, @Magician .... Imagine most of the others are small studios? We'll have to see what difference it makes, though

With Intel believing the chip shortage won't be over until 2024 and rumours suggesting more crossgen 1st party games (e.g. Forza Motorsport), 8th gen systems seem like they're going to be breaking records in terms of support. PS4/XB1 may end up overtaking the Game Boy as the longest supported system in terms of major support, Switch may end up becoming the most supported Nintendo system in terms of 3rd parties, etc.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land is amazing and managed to surpass my favorite Kirby game Kirby game(Kirby Planet Robotbot).

@Grumblevolcano

It won't "end up becoming" the most supported Nintendo system by third parties, it already is. Has been for a while. What other Nintendo platform has several thousand games available for it? The Switch has more than twice as many games as the DS had, and the Switch still has years in front of it.

@Magician Just to add, the level of quality third party games is better too where it's more than an endless ocean of (sorry Anti!) shovel ware that consists of princess pony cooking rubbish which you can pick up in the bargain bin for less than half the price of a Starbucks.

I am over ten hours into BD now and unless it is like Shield where the second half of the game felt super rushed, I think I am in for a long haul here given I haven't even got my third badge yet.

Talking of that third gym, my Jirachi and Haunter seemed like a perfect one two punch for the Leader until I got to their Lucario and that thing just DESTROYED me. I have no idea why that Drain Punch move it does, does so much damage, but damn. Like even when its not super effective it one shots my entire team, even Pokemon of the same level.

I won't say BD is hard to the point of being frustrating, but compared to Shield where it is basically a very organic curve all the way through - maybe a little on the easy side of that curve - I feel like BD has really made me work my ass off for each piece of progress. The underground and the ability to rebattle trainers helps with the grind, but I really do feel like I properly need to engage with this game in a way I didn't feel like I needed to with Shield.

And that probably sounds like a negative for Shield, but I think it is more oppressive here, you have to basically play the match game here, which takes away from the aspect I enjoy of building a team of Pokemon you befriend over your adventure. Here, Pokemon are more disposable tools I swap in and out to try and keep pace with the type distributions of enemy teams and that is just less fun for me.

I think a lot of this comes from bad design decisions, rather than it being a really engaging title. While the underground helps a little, I feel like it is difficult to have an even type coverage in how Pokemon are distributed in BD. As you go to each new location, they only seem to add one or two new Pokemon to the existing selection (and maybe the evolution of past Pokemon) which means there are lots of types I have either never seen in the wild, or have only bumped into one Pokemon of that type.

You couple that with Pokemon that just seem to hit extra hard for no explainable reason and fights can turn into real slogs. While that Lucario or that Dino in the first gym will hit you like a runaway train, your moves generally seem to do less damage as well. Super Effective moves aren't a guaranteed one shot a lot of the time and if you are only hitting regular moves, you better be ready for a real sludgefest as you chip away so little, it feels like calling the move "effective" must be an error. I wouldn't say I necessarily miss the Arceus battle system, which I think was bad in the opposite direction, but something in the middle of these two systems would be appreciated.

I guess a lot of this was done to make you more actively engage with the underground portion of the game. And that is fine, I am happy to, but the underground feels less practical than Shield's wild area and for whatever reason the Pokemon in the underground seem to be impossible to catch. They have like one HP, be paralysed and just kick out at one constantly.

Honestly I had a pretty different experience. I agree the type variety in BDSP is very mediocre, but I didn’t find it particularly difficult at all outside of parts of the E4 and post game stuff.

I enjoyed SwSh but found my team felt increasingly replaceable, as I shuffled a bunch of them in and out trying to keep them from being too overleveled.

@Pizzamorg my main criticism with BDSP is that the level curve is all over the place. This is partly due to the branching pathways of the original game (you can do badges 3 and 4 in any order), but mostly due to poor balancing around the mandatory Exp Share.

While I don't remember the first 3 badges being particularly difficult, I think you're going to have a much easier time for gyms 4 to 6. Around this point the levels begin to really stagnate and, if you fight every trainer like me, you'll probably find yourself a good 10 levels above a couple of the gym leaders...

Yeah it definitely isn't hard all the time, just has very sharp spikes that feel like real walls or like team checks where you have to go away, rebuild or grind, to overcome them. It isn't inherently a bad thing, but I just didn't expect to do this as often as I have had to, after playing Shield where I think I only ever had to really stop and grind once.

Here, the early portion up until you beat the first gym leader was pretty hard. The second gym leader i was able to beat first time, but I have to wonder if it would have gone different if I wasn't given that Jirachi, as up until this point I don't think there is a single fire Pokemon you find in the wild.

After that point, I was having pretty competitive battles with trainers in the wild, but mostly coming out on top. In Shield you basically never had to use items, but I am getting through a pretty steady flow of them here as I top up in between battles.

I faced my rival for the second time I think it was and during that fight, he beat me into the floor. I had to grind and come back. I only levelled up a couple of levels and beat them on the second go, so I guess I wasn't that far behind but I don't think the Rival ever gave me trouble in Shield.

From there, it felt like the game generally become significantly easier, but then I got to this third gym and their Lucario just Nuked my whole squad.

@Magician In terms of total number of 3rd party games, sure Switch is at the top for Nintendo systems but I was meaning in the sense of NES and SNES felt like a bigger representation for 3rd party support as a whole at the time.