ArcticEcho

@Lizuka In the same boat, I love Story Of Seasons but am very lukewarm on Rune Factory. I have played 4 entries in the series, so it's not even a per game thing. It just doesn't have the appeal of SOS, Stardew Valley, Fantasy Life, or Animal Crossing. It's not the character designs or writing either, it's the game itself.

It's cute but it doesn't seem to offer anything more than or different from Rune Factory. And honestly something about Rune Factory just misses the mark for me. I put 25 hours on Rune Factory 4 on Switch and while I love the characters and writing, I don't find the gameplay satisfying like I do for the Story Of Seasons games. I have 15 hours on Rune Factory 5 so far and like it better than 4, even if the consensus seems to be that its worse.

My dream is finally coming true, all of the Tales games on a single Nintendo device.

@Tibob It's on the easier side. This Pikmin was more puzzle focused than the prior ones. The thing that is kinda dumb is you can clear the entire map of enemies and they don't ever respawn, or replace them with new enemies even after many days have passed.

More Kirby Air Ride! Can't wait.

@Coffee-Waffle Not in agreement, Gen 2 & 3 are so much better than Gen 1.

I really only like 5 NES games and I've had my fill of them over the years.

@R_Ryder Legends Arceus is the best of the Switch games. Sun /Moon is the best of the last 10 years. Black 2 / White 2 is the best of the last 20 years. However, Pokemon is designed as a social thing, so many of these old games features are defunct and you will never get the full experience. If you want to get into Pokemon, the latest game is the right choice, even if the previous entries were way better.

I bought 4 full price games this year. Tales Of Graces, Fantasy Life, Mario Kart World, and Atelier Yumia. I will probably still get Tales Of Xillia, Kirby Air Riders, and Metroid Prime 4. I bought 3 games under $30.

Every game after Dragon Marked For Death and the first Gal Guardians from them has been kind of a miss for me. This just looks like Umbraclaw combined with Luminous Avenger.

Lumiose City is just so... uninspiring, and the buildings are all flat boxes with images for windows. It's not the disaster that Scarlet/Violet was, but it looks less enjoyable than Sword/Shield and Legends: Arceus.

@Kiyata Simulation, in my opinion.

Not getting burned on a third Playstation handheld.

This is exactly what I wanted them to make for years. Battling is fun but I hate raising Pokemon, which is why I always avoided competitive. Too bad there's no single-player modes like Stadium, though.

Pokemon Champions is exactly what I've wanted them to make for years, super excited.

@Dazman It's more like Mario Kart Battle Mode combined with Super Monkey Ball, than a normal racing game.

@TerribleTerabytes I don't trust any gamer that doesn't like Kirby Air Ride, tbh. It's one of the most perfect games to just drop in, pick a mode and just play without any BS. It's a solid collection of a bunch of mini arcade games, exactly like Super Monkey Ball.

My Switch got between 17Mb/s and 34Mb/s. My Switch 2 gets between 34Mb/s and 220Mb/s. On release day my Switch 2 got 6Mb/s.

@FredsBodyDouble The last one had online play but it was limited to 'subsonic' difficulty. It also had very few players.

All screens look the same to me, so I don't care.

I got in first place about 6 or 7 times so far, and my score is 7400. I play it every day, but it gets a little stressful, you're always one bad decision away from catastrophe, lol. Maybe I'll go back to normal races, eventually, but it's my go to mode right now.

@tanaka2687 I love using the fusion mechanic 'to fix' vehicles I don't like and make them awesome. Somehow grinding for coins is satisfying in this game too. It's a simple arcade racer but with a modern finesse.

@SakuraHaruka Pokemon is a billion dollar franchise, these are empty excuses, all these timelines are self-created. Pokemon Company can make some filler Pokemon seasons and make reimagined card packs from the older games, done. Now there's time to make better games.

So basically they've been trolling us with these horrendous Pokemon games. I'm done with them.

@pipes It's like Mario Kart, there are 3 different speed classes, subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic. The mph they are showing is low, I think they're showing 'subsonic', it looks like 'subsonic' to me as I've played it recently. They're going slower to show off the visuals.

@LinktotheFuture Just saying JRPG with no explanation evokes the idea of a Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy/Persona adjacent game and that's so far off the mark of what Fantasy Life is. The vast majority of Fantasy Life's gameplay loop is crafting things in a guild and going out on supply runs.

@LinktotheFuture It's gameplay is exactly like an MMORPG, it just doesn't have the multiplayer built in natively. I didn't explain that in my comment properly though, sorry. I edited it and added 'single-player' The rest of my point stands, the game is not that similar to Rune Factory.

@Polvasti Fantasy Life is not that similar to Rune Factory. Fantasy Life is a cutesy single-player MMO with certain elements of Animal Crossing. It doesn't have relationship building, a calender system, holiday events, rearing animals or complex farming.

@the_beaver It's better than the first, way better. Some things are done a bit different but the QOL upgrades are phenomenal. Me and my cousins were big fans of the first one and we've been having a blast linking up and trading resources and tools, and teaming up to haul in the boss fishes. If you enjoyed the first one you'll enjoy this one.

@Suketoudara I've gotten into a ton of arguments over this, but FAST is almost exactly like F-Zero GX. It has a few less game mechanics: no spin, and it doesn't have that higher level slide mechanic. There is a button to change colors between orange and blue. You need to be blue to use a blue boost i.e. The vehicle stats don't vary as widely as F-Zero GX, so vehicles can feel samey, but also none of them feel bad. It's a good game, one of my favorite Switch exclusives.

@Novamii I did it wrong somehow when upgrading to the OLED and lost every single playtime counter. Results may vary. I liked having those records though.

Rhythm Games: Arcaea & Kamitsubaki City Ensemble

Sim City looking like it might have a chance.

@batmanbud2 Yes I played Shadow Dragon. I did not play Echoes, forgot it exists.

They have managed to make every single game after Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee look progressively worse, they truly have a talent.

@KimBread All of that dev's bellyaching was on him. The game's towns and world were massive, and there was a literal mountain of dialogue. The sales seemed fine, I saw it on the ESHOP a lot for example, but his project size was unrealistic, so when he divided profit by hours, it showed him making less than minimum wage.

@sevex I read the accessibility options very carefully and was able to craft it in a way that was really challenging but not outright evil. There was something about screen flipping during fishing and I immediately turned that off, just not doing that. You have no one to impress, the game only had 1 playthrough on Youtube.

I loved Phoenotopia Awakening on Switch, it had such great writing and an incredible art direction. I had a lot of fun with. I played it more than Breath Of The Wild.

@Buizel The load times might be like a second longer but it saves instantly(the PS3 took forever to save).

@Bobb Abyss beats Graces in story and characters, but Abyss's gameplay is not even close to Graces level. I'm halfway through Abyss but started playing the Graces port when it came out.

@Solomon_Rambling That's interesting. I played Vesperia and Symphonia back to back, they're very similar. Vesperia is more like Symphonia than Symphonia's sequel.

@JohnnyMind My first three Tales games were Dawn Of The New World, Vesperia, and Graces. I played Symphonia many years later. Vesperia is the most beginner friendly, but Graces has the best gameplay mechanics. Symphonia is charming but it's just an older and harder Vesperia that is stingy with save points, albeit Symphonia has a better story. Most people suggest Symphonia simply because they played it when it first came out 20+ years ago. I'd really suggest Xillia to start, but it's not on Switch.

@the_beaver Xenoblade 3 is not too far off, but the focus of the franchise is collecting ingredients to craft items to complete quests and fight with. The ingredients all have properties and quality ratings and you have to stack them to get the effects you need. An RPG combined with that Potion Craft game basically.

@Ainze "We've seen Switch games do better before." When?

@MirrorFate2 Why would a game run worse on PS5 than Switch, like seriously? It's like 20x more powerful.

@tanaka2687 I really liked the Arland and Dusk Trilogy... but not the Mysterious Trilogy. Ryza Trilogy didn't interest me so I didn't play it yet. This one looks really cool, imo.

@MirrorFate2 Which means the Switch version will fair much worse.

As happy as I am this is coming to Switch, I think I'm going to have to buy it for my laptop. It looks way too impressive for me to believe it will run well. I wish Switch 2 was out already.

I started playing this with my cousin last week. Looking forward to being able to trade, and open new booster packs.

@-wc- The Switch as a platform needs to be replaced. The entry model is now too weak to justify a more powerful pro version that merely plays the same games but enhanced. 50% more power makes sense 3 years in. 8 years in it better be 300% more powerful. It would have to be a new platform. Or they could be like Apple and just make it that new games just won't run on the old stuff. I feel it would need to be digital only then so people aren't buying carts that won't run. Nintendo are conservative though, so they will go with a new platform as it makes retail simple. Switch Pro will just have to be thought of as a scrapped idea.