ARPK

@russellohh That's been kind of a non-issue for me, so chalk it up to a difference in philosophies I guess. I think you've found an approach that saves you money and spares you tedium, and you're definitely right that none of this means the death of the 3DS eShop. My guess is that NoE balanced the cost of updating a dying system for changing times against the money flowing in from it and decided it wasn't worth the hassle. It's inconvenient for less technologically savvy folks, but Nintendo has rarely chosen convenience in the first place.

I'm sure it'll make a lot of money on the brand alone, but meh.

@russellohh Yeah, but you can just save a credit card to your eShop account so you don't have to input the info every time.

@Hinade I can't speak to the spending habits of your specific country, especially not knowing where you're from. All I can say is that not having the option to make quick and easy purchases directly from a digital device, even on one that's dead and another that's on its way out, is inconvenient. The more hoops a person has to jump through to buy something, the more likely it is they'll change their mind along the way. It's likely a measured move on Nintendo of Europe's part, it's just unfortunate nonetheless.

Dang. That's gonna be a big roadblock to purchasing digital games and it's really going to hurt sales. No way around it. Sorry y'all.

Can't believe the number of people who clearly didn't read the review. The original versions of the games are an easy 9/10, but GungHo's porting job is atrocious. Grandia II is legitimately unplayable in handheld mode, and the less I say about the first Grandia here the better. I say this as a huge fan of the series: 5/10 is a plenty generous score for this disaster.

I'd urge anyone thinking of buying the Grandia HD Collection to pass until it gets patched. There's a whole list of bugs and issues you can view over on Reddit, and with the sorry state it's in right now it's not worth a purchase.

GungHo's rollout of this collection has been questionable, to say the least, to the point where if there's anything left of the old GameArts I would hope they're reconsidering their relationship with the publisher.

@BongoBongo123 The first game requires a fair bit of grinding to get some optional things, while the second game requires no grinding whatsoever, but in both games you can get by naturally just by being a good student to the excellent battle system.

@bert0503 I caught something about publishing rights for the third game being tied up with Square Enix, but that could just as well be hearsay and nothing more. It's hard to say where the future of the series is since Game Arts hasn't developed an original title since 2012 or so, and it's likely the studio in its current form isn't suited to meeting the modern demands for a triple-A JRPG.

@ozwally Bingo. Context means everything.

This is a great example of twisting data to fit a narrative. It's true that many people who buy Nintendo systems own them in addition to another more powerful home console. This is an approach which has worked well for Nintendo since the Wii was released, and it's likely why Sony and Microsoft don't view them as direct competition. The problem here is that as bad as EA has been for decades now, they used to make at least some effort to throw us all a bone and tailor a steady stream of releases to Nintendo hardware. I don't want to get into the hows and whys, but I am constantly shocked that EA squanders and mismanages such a vast amount of talent and intellectual property under their umbrella. As good as they are at making money, they've been equally exceptional at costing themselves.

In the console business, software sells hardware. Plain and simple. It's worth mentioning that the 3DS more or less hit its peak saturation a long time ago, but once the new releases from Nintendo trickled up completely the writing was on the wall. It makes me sad, but you can't stop the march of time.

@LunarFlame17 I appreciate your perspective, to be honest. The process of creating video games is thankless and the product is often scrutinized to absurd degrees, so I think being able to forgive the little things and enjoy what's in front of you is really refreshing. I'm also sad I missed it when it was on sale, but I'm kind of a sucker and hoping for a drop on the physical version anyway.

@LunarFlame17 I'm probably coming across harsher than I intended. The patches have polished up the game noticeably since its Switch launch. So it's not a bad port per se, it's definitely competent, but it's going to inevitably be compared to the Vita original or the more powerful PS4. On those grounds, it's pretty rough both ways. Ys VIII is still a great game at its core, it's just not competitively priced like a large number of other Switch ports.

Would've pulled the trigger on buying Ys VIII ages ago if it wasn't still $50-60 for a badly-optimized port.

More power to him if he wants to go work somewhere else...it’s still creepy to fetishize high school girls in games that are primarily played by adult men. It might even be a different story if the games were good, but they’re pure gimmickry.

Wow. Slow news day, huh?

Extra Epic Yarn is one of those games I can see myself getting at some point for the convenience of having on the go, but it’s just not inspired enough to run out and buy on day one. It’s unfortunate, because any steam the 3DS might’ve had left due to the uniqueness of the system has been completely ignored by the last gasp of first-party titles.

Is it weird I’m actually just stoked there’s less than two dozen releases this time around?

Played this one on Vita and I wasn’t impressed. Total bore. Your mileage may vary, but I’d recommend spending your money on Xenoblade or waiting for Final Fantasy 12.

This isn’t Nintendo news, fellas. I don’t know why you keep reporting on this guy when no one would know or care what he’s doing if you didn’t.

Managed to hold it together until the end, that win pose is the funniest thing I’ve seen in the whole series and I’ve been playing since MK2.

@dystome Not a chance. The toned-down version of Mortal Kombat for SNES in the 90’s was a PR disaster, no one is looking for a repeat of that.

@Mando44646 That’s how I feel. I’m definitely not alone in wishing the Switch eShop allowed people to rate purchases.

Jeez. Aside from a few nice demos, it’s no wonder my Switch has been gathering dust lately. It’s my own fault for crossing my fingers on a quiet release of Grandia 2 or Baldur’s Gate.

Yeah, I can die now.

Jeez, a lot of doom and gloom here. Most of the good talking points have been covered already, but as a 3DS title competing with THREE other Mario & Luigi games already (one of which is a Select), this game was always going to be dead on arrival. Unlike a lot of people, I don't really want to see the 3DS die a swift death, but if they're being honest about its future and not just delivering PR to get people to buy up remaining units, any future titles for this system have to be more sensible. Captain Toad had the right idea: Dual release, HD on Switch and 3D on 3DS.

Even though it likely outperformed Square-Enix's expectations, it bums me out to not see Octopath make the top ten.

I'm surprised to see Luigi's Mansion make it in the top ten since it released in October. Though without any sales figures, it's hard to glean anything concrete from this list. Game could've sold surprisingly well, or there could've been a HUGE gap in performance between first and eighth.

Please stop giving this dude free publicity.

Gameplay looks good enough for what it is, but whoever was responsible for that title really needs some kind of marketing consultant.

@masterLEON Since the bug is avoidable, I think it's unlikely they'd issue a recall. More likely they'll just quietly patch it.

I think even for people who haven’t moved on, people who might be getting a 3DS for the first time, the question is: who are these games for? 3DS has one of the greatest libraries of games in history, but that’s precisely the problem. If you’re just starting off on the system, are you going to buy the $40 remake of the GameCube game or the $20 Nintendo Select? Between the immense library of cheaper 3DS games, and most of its older audience moving on to the Switch, there’s a very very niche audience for upcoming 3DS games.