Andee

@CriticalGames Thanks for chiming in! Would you say that one could easily jump in to part 2 without having played the first?

@PinballBuzzbro I was literally watching Secret of Nimh the other night — and yeah it reminded me just how hit and miss Don Bluth can be - for as unrelentingly dark his films often are at times, he can be unbearably twee to the same degree.

It's a lot of fun for what it is, and the use of pre-rendered CG for sprites was pretty revolutionary at the time, but it simply doesn't have the sheer depth of something like Super Mario World (which I got the same Christmas). Stripped of its unique graphics and fantastic music it's a pretty rudimentary platformer.

I'm by no means up to speed with the legal logistics of Pokemon, but is there some reason why Gamefreak are withholding the mainline games from the NSO/eShop?

@Valkian24 That was my immediate thought as well. I've never seen this artwork before, but I dig it!

@FX29 Definitely — while I love the Japanese audio, I found the Ryza games to be very chatty, particularly during battle and crafting, so not even having subtitles for those sections was an unfortunate disconnect.

@sevex Masahiro Sakurai agrees with you. He didn't include Dolby Surround in the latest Kirby game because it was one less splash screen to sit through when you boot it up.

They're already on GoG, but I'd love to see Capcom bring out the PS1 versions of 1 2 and 3 to modern consoles — the remakes are ace, but there's a real charm to those originals.

You can find it in most supermarkets, usually near the gravy.

Unless it's an FPS

@ScalenePowers yeah, that post game stuff really put a dent in my enthusiasm to continue beyond the closing credits — 100%ing absolutely everything to get the true ending was a daunting ask. Now that they've apparently tweaked the parrot, I might give it another go

My prediction is that it will be announced before the end of the fiscal year, and then released at some point after that.

I bet Nintendo saw this leak, raised their eyebrows and then very coolly said "well if you're going to be like that we're just not going to say anything for another three years"

Gonna have to hold my hands up, as much as I absolutely adored SoS initially, the back half of the game was when I really started to feel the general repetitiveness and lack of depth to the combat. And while I didn't find the writing egregiously bad or anything, it's been a month or so since I finished and I'm really struggling to remember anything that really stood out to me. And the biggest slap in the face came at the very end when you're expected to pick up ALL the secret conches to get the "true" ending. Sod that noise.

@JohnnyMind Yeah, I found that Rune Factory has a few QoL aspects (mainly to do with inventory/storage) that Stardew lacks (although the new update does seem to go to some way to alleviate that), but it does lean more into the action/RPG aspect than Stardew does. I'd say give 'em both a try! It's not like they're super expensive.

Inexplicably, there are no weapon pickups or objects to throw about, which seems like an obvious missed-trick.

Daniel-San should be picking up radios to chuck at Johnny and his pals, or finding hoses to spray them with water.

@FX29 Yeah I managed to snag a second hand copy just over a year ago but it goes for a pretty penny now!

Auto-advance dialogue should be in every game! Although because Ryza is Japanese-only, I don't usually listen to the entire line, I usually skip after I've read the sub

@FlyingDunsparce Yeah, this is yet another in a long line of medium-tier spec games that simply don't run well on tech as old as the Switch. It definitely feels time to pull the trigger

@Jeaz Yeah, a lot of animated main characters around that era had that centerpart/curtains look — Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire to name but two more.

@JH64
GB<GBA
DS<3DS

I can see them doing a straight-up iteration of the previous console, and personally I would be down for that.

@BigRed40 I'd say Virtual Console as well, but they're more or less doing that on the eShop, there's a whole mess of 8/16-bit versions of games dotted around various compilations (particularly Konami ones)

@DripDropCop146 Yeah, the movie that single-handedly killed the studio! Shame, really — I rather enjoyed it!

Super looking forward to playing this again; I think there's something about the Switch that just feels right for these kinds of adventure/puzzle games.

@N64-ROX I dunno, I think it looks pretty crisp when it's moving

I've never played a My Time At game, but they've always been on my visual periphery as they do seem up my alley — I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

Yeah I never thought we'd see a remake of the original DQ, let alone the entire 1-3 trilogy! So I begrudingly played the only legit version we were given on the Switch, and to echo a lot of people here, I would definitely give them a wide berth — they run like absolute bum-gravy.

Genuinely curious to see if and how Nintendo are going to handle game performance updates if the Switch Successor is (hopefully) backwards compatible with games like this that are being released around now.

@Lizuka woah, spoilers!

Playstation it is, then!

Code in a box is the worst of both worlds — you're tethered to an un-resellable digital copy, but you still need to wait for a physical delivery, and are lumbered with a piece of plastic.

Well this kinda popped up out of nowhere! Only saw the trailer last week — Reckon I'll wait for a sale though (already got a lot on as it is)

@Olliemar28 how long would you say it took for you to roll credits?

upgraded GPU
better ray tracing
some AI-upscaling
2TB SSD
disc drive and stand are not included

How much AI-upscaling?
"...some."

Could have had a banging pre-prepared Bruce Dickinson theme song though

https://youtu.be/w2WIWtffuRA

Pretty random selection, especially considering they're doing sequential numbered volumes.

Nabbed — I've always had a soft spot for the 8/16-bit era Zelda instruction booklet art.

@Serpenterror Yeah, I did begrudgingly pick up and play all three of those when they were on sale, as I was pretty sure it was going to be the only legit way to play them on modern consoles, so you can imagine my relief when they announced this trilogy!

Do we know who's on soundtrack duties for this one? Always loved the work of Jake Kaufman on a lot of Wayforward's games

I've never played any of the Yars' series but this looks like a fun romp

@HeadPirate I think my chief counterpoint to that is, especially considering my backlog, I'm unlikely ever to revisit a game once I've completed it - especially not a 30+ hour RPG (although the earlier games are apparently shorter from what I've read), and I'd always like to get as much as I can out of it in my first playthrough. I've seen people online talking about their second/third playthrough of FFVII Rebirth, which boggles my mind — that was a game I sank well into the triple digits of hours, and by the end I was just glad to see the back of it.

@Oubie I was a little late to the party, Ryza being my first entry into the series (the review of 3 inspired me to check out the first game), and yeah I do enjoy the chill/fluffy nature of the series as a whole. Apparently a lot of the earlier games operate under a time limit though, which would actually be something of a dealbreaker, personally — I don't like the idea of feeling rushed, especially in a game so vast as a crafting RPG.

@Oubie I blasted through Ryzas 1 and 2 last year — still have 3 on my shelf waiting to be played. While they're a lot of fun, I think moving to real-time ARPG combat will make grinding/farming for resources, especially in a game where resources are crucial, much more of a streamlined process.

@Harmonie That's good to know, thanks! And yeah I'm right there with you on the performance anxiety thing — I think having once I've played the game for a bit and gotten to grips with it I'll be much more confident going full Raider — it's the idea of being dropped right in the deep end right off the bat that gives me the heebie jeebies

I'm not into MMOs but I had a quick go on PS5 and it was a surprisingly solo-friendly experience. I'd definitely give it more attention if I could play it handheld

I've yet to play Ryza 3, but I really enjoyed the first two, but I was really interested to see that they seem to be eschewing traditional turn-based for real-time combat in Yumia. While I've never found grinding/farming particularly bothersome, I think it'll be a nice QoL improvement not having to stop and start every time you bump into an enemy.

@MrGawain Good one

@SBandy1 yeah, I really appreciated the dip switch options in the collection

I'd like to see SSF2 Turbo HD Remix re-released — that's been languishing in the PS360 generation for well over a decade now. Or is that basically what The Final Challengers was?

@somnambulance yeah, I did end up dropping it for a few months but once I realised how close to the end I'd got I just turned all the accessibility dials down to their lowest and powered through for a sense of closure (didn't touch the DLC though).

The puzzles were fun at first, but yeah those final few dungeons felt like something that a mod had created just to be punishingly difficult. I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment when I'd finished them, just relief that it was over.

@somnambulance Yep, exactly the same for me — Absolutely loved it for the first 20 hours or so, but towards the back half (the game could have been at least a third shorter) the combat and puzzles became extremely fiddly and stress-inducing

This does look sumptuous.

Alabaster Dawn looks to build upon "the best aspects" of CrossCode

Oh I sure hope so — CrossCode was such a flawed masterpiece, by the end there were just a few too many imperfections and design choices that made me all-but drop the game entirely.

@Maubari I really enjoyed Yoshi's Island but it felt like it didn't have anywhere near the scope/scale and hidden secrets of Super Mario World; more like a return to linear style of SMB3.

Yeah, I was worried about the gyro controls being an issue. You say it's not a deal-breaker but I double dipped on the Switch version of the first game and I just couldn't jive with the jank of the gyro and pretty much shelved it — which is a real shame, especially having had so much fun with the precision pointing of the Wii original. It's also one of the reasons I never bothered with the House of the Dead remaster. I really hope the Switch Successor comes with some modernised equivalent of a sensor bar.