ChibiNinja

With the flimsy axe, you can typically get wood three times per tree. You won't cut it down if you hit it more, but you usually won't get more wood either.

I really wish these guides had their own section instead of sharing the news timeline, though. Every time a major Nintendo game comes out, these things just choke out all the news...

Honestly I don't think any of them are all that great.

Huh. I don't often see EU covers I like, but this one's pretty good, and just beats out the NA for me this time. The Japanese one is very Japanese indeed - plenty of spirit, but way too messy for my tastes.

Eh...I was really hoping that silhouette wouldn't just be another simian...though I suppose we hadn't had a legendary one yet.

The movie summary sounds like they took that Kangaskhan episode and made it a lot more serious?

These are all bad, but I went with NA as the least bad because it's the only one that doesn't fill me with dread.

Ehh...even if I didn't think these kinds of watches were a huge waste of money already, the design is very...bland. Not that I could afford it anyways, I suppose...

@Smashfan502 It's more like it's practically a meme at this point, like the stores have some sort of obsession with "Posters! Posters are great, everyone loves POSTERS! ...and nothing else." There was a time where Gamestop had decent preorder bonuses sometimes, but now it feels like it's cheap - as in low-quality - posters most of the time, double-sided for the big-name games sometimes, and a nice-quality poster or wall hanging a small percentage of the time.

For example, Sword/Shield had a nice cloth wall hanging, but the last few Zelda and Pokemon games - and most other things, actually - just got the sort of poster you'd buy at a store for a few bucks. When the game is big enough and they're feeling pretty generous sometimes they'll throw in a guidebook - it feels like they've got a love affair with paper, and that's the joke.

Whereas I'm sure that Gamestop will almost definitely be offering a cheap poster, so it's not all sunshine and rainbows in the pre-order world.

I've seen these sorts of shows. I recognize that it's hard to do well in such a limited and timed situation, especially with a theme you aren't super familiar with. And some of them don't look too bad.

But looking at some of these? There's really only one thing I can say: Oof

Hm...I wish the scan quality was higher. I can't quite tell if the Japanese one looks a bit washed out because that's how the art is or because the scan isn't great.

Guess I'll go with Europe this time, but this CGI looks pretty wonky on all three.

@Chibi_Manny I'm going to say it's probably because they moved her and changed the background - in the original art her hair is slightly covered by another character, and they certainly weren't going to draw that in after moving her so it was easier to crop them out and pretend that they never existed in the art.

That's just a guess based on what I can see though; I don't know what the release people were thinking for sure.

At first I was going to go with NA for the sharper colors, but then I realized that the Japan cover only looks washed out because of how the two covers were scanned...there a clear difference in method and quality on that front, which has nothing to do with the actual cover itself. So Japan for me.

I just noticed that all but a couple of the comments here - be they positive, neutral, whatever - have at least one downvote in a way that seems...equal parts suspicious and pointless. Was someone throwing a little tantrum or something?

As for the actual article, I think it's a neat marketing idea, but I'm not really interested in the games themselves. Which is just as well, because it's a lot less neat when you can't reliably access the internet every one of those days. (Nintendo systems hate my current router, unfortunately.)

...Isn't Gigantamax Snorlax only available through this event so far, unlike Butterfree? Why does this article say 'more frequently' throughout?

Japan for me. Second (though not close) would be NA - sure it's kinda ugly but it does catch attention. I don't like the one for Europe - the art is really crammed into the corner and those logos plastered all over a flat black border somehow feel more obnoxious to me than the admittedly messy NA cover.

Japan. Similar to Europe but the logo is nicer and I'm not a big fan of the huge black strip on the side.

Also, maybe don't hold these unless you have images of approximately equal quality? The Japanese one seems to be a lower quality scan, which hurts the art through no fault of the actual boxart itself. (The NA one might be too? With the rendered art style and busy colors, it's a bit less obvious at a glance.)

Eh...not the most interesting set of box arts here. I picked Japanese because it has style, though I considered NA for a bit. The European one looks kinda amateurish to me; I'm definitely not a fan of the way that border is done.

Also, the apparent tradition of shuffling the regions around and showing a smidge of bias in the summaries continues. At least the bias is way less blatant this time around, making things more fair...but I suspect that has more to do with how similar the three are than anything else.

Not a big fan of Europe's black rock background. I almost went for NA but that color dungeon bit is rather obnoxious and takes up a lot of space so I went for Japan's rather pleasant, light-hearted art.

@CapricornDavid I was just thinking the guy and name seemed familiar, though I've yet to play the previous stuff myself.

...Even if I agree with some of the points, shouldn't you be less blatantly biased on a vote you're running? You kinda praised the Japanese version and dumped on the North American version pretty quickly and clearly on this one.

Why do you keep juggling around the region order, NL? It's a little weird...

You'll get access to the Royal Knights if you preorder? What? How's that work, exactly? Are they just...not obtainable for people who don't preorder? Because that's terrible if that's the case.

@retro_player_22 From what I've heard, the early versions didn't say that - they had to add that to the title, and change a character's name, because Saban (who seems to think they own the entire genre) threw a little tantrum and threatened legal action.

EDIT: Forgot to comment on the game itself! I've seen gameplay from the PC version; it's very cheesy and very fun, though the challenges can be a bit tricky at times.

That hammer's uses sorta makes me think of Solomon's key.

I played the 3DS version and...eh, it was alright. There was some pretty cool stuff, but it was definitely grindy and too focused on lucky drops for my taste.

I'm glad this is finally filling in its missing slot amidst the other games, but I wish they'd stop being so lazy about their 'remasters'.

It might look better putting screenshots from this next to those recorded directly from the the PS1, but if you remove the hardware scaledown, this looks pretty much exactly the same as the original game. Just running the original disc through an emulator with the right settings will get you a game that looks pretty much the same as this trailer!

I'm guessing we might get higher res, smoothed ui and portraits, but the actual modes don't look to be 'remastered' in any really meaningful way.

I'd like a demo to help me decide, personally. I wish more games had demos.

I'll be getting Team Sonic Racing...eventually. I might not be able to afford it right away.

Not really interested in anything else on this list, personally.

Really hoping the new cards include the stuff from Dark Side of Dimensions.

@molliolli182 Except that they'd hopefully at least add in a way to do card pop, or put those cards in the main game - as it is, in the virtual console version (which you can't connect to others in) it is impossible to complete the card list. I'd definitely love a switch game though, and no mircrotransactions please.

As for the app...no older cards? PASS.

@Wanjia Really? Huh. Since they're selling at full eshop price, that means that unless they end up doing a bundle at some point, buying them from there instead of the eshop is COMPLETELY pointless.

...Meh. Persona is neat and all but I'm not really that interested in this addition. I'm hoping they at least do some cool stuff with him; if he turns into another mostly slashy-stabby character, I'll probably hardly use him.

So...what I'm hearing is that Palutena is still not that fun to use.

So this is an instagram-only thing? eh, pass. I don't really care to make an account there.

Eh. I know a ton of people are crazy about octopath, but I'm not really a fan. I knew just from reading the nominations list that I wasn't really going to care to much about this year's awards, though.

So after getting this game, playing a bit, holding for the creative update, then giving it another chance...yeah no, this game doesn't deserve that high of a score, and the seeming lack of complaints baffles me.

Maybe it's a bit more fun online with multiple other players? Even the creative mode they added isn't as much fun as I expected, though. The game is severely held back by lousy controls - if all you want to do is fight monsters I guess it manages, but if you're more into games like Minecraft or Dragon Quest Builders it's pretty disappointing.

If you are gonna play it though, make sure to update the game to the newest version - aside from the creative mode, it slightly reduces load times and lag, which were preeeetty bad initially.

For the people who like it, great, I'm glad you're enjoying yourselves - but personally I will be trading this in at the next opportunity.

Hm...it looks like it could be a decent or at worst tolerable movie, but I am NOT a fan of the style used on the Pokemon. One or two aren't too bad (if a bit too fluffy/uncanny still) but most of them look...unpleasant.

@Nemodius I didn't realize there were proper screenshots now; I thought NL just used game shots again. So it's just a case of early reporters either not knowing or not caring what words mean, that's...good? I guess?

'hyper-realistic'? 'similar to Rocket Raccoon'? Urgh, I do not like the sound of that one bit. I'll wait to see screenshots/trailers to decide for sure whether I care to watch it, but I'm setting my expectations low.

Maaaaybe should have used a slightly higher quality image if they're going to be pointing out hidden background stuff...

Price is awful, but the chair is adorable.

Here's hoping it doesn't take an eternity to get localized - and that not taking an eternity doesn't result in lazy localization.

Really liked the first one, but it definitely had its problems. Looking forward to the improvements on this one. (Here's hoping for a better 'free build'-type mode; Terra Incognita was...not so good.)

Eh...not a fan of this, as I can't really play online for the most part, and I've never been a fan of stuff that can't be accessed if all you do is occasionally connect on an outing.

'Course, since they aren't getting rid of loot crates or making the various cosmetics from past events more widely available, I can't say I'm surprised...

Ah, Ultima...if only EA had never gotten its filthy hands on it...

Here's hoping they at least stop to finish all the fixes before release. The PC version is still in the middle of having a lot of things hurriedly fixed as it is, from what I've heard.

Eh. I know I'm in the minority here, but I didn't think Octopath Traveler was all that great. In fact, I can't really think of any significant (new) titles from Square Enix in the last five years or so that I really enjoyed.

To be fair, I haven't exactly played anywhere near all of them - can't afford the games, especially not with other stuff I care more about releasing every so often. Still, I don't really trust the company with anything these days.

Eh. I'm just gonna stick with my original plan to eventually get it for PC - that way I can have more control over things like graphic resources and scripts.

Nice to see that this is coming to the Switch at all though. Hope they make good use of the hardware - Fes wasn't very good.

I want these so bad...until I noticed they're wired-only, ick. I still kind of want them, but they really should be making these wireless by now.

Not ENTIRELY my thing, but I'd definitely like to give it a try; looks pretty.

That being said, if I were given choice I'd much rather have the Digimon World and Story games brought to the Switch. (And translated, in the case of Re:Digitize Decode)

So not only is it dumbed down and panders to GO, but they're putting in requirements that prevent people from doing some of the typical self-challenges without adding a bunch of specific 'exception' rules.

Hard to do and enjoy a self-challenge when you have to repeatedly break your own rules just to move forward. The gym guy ALREADY explains what the leader is weak to in the games; there's no need for this. The idea of level restrictions is possibly even more aggravating - at least with types you can just catch one for the check and then never ever use it, but with levels you might have to go out of your way to make it work.

I loved Yellow plenty, and despite some complaints I continue playing and mostly enjoying the main series (didn't like Ultra Moon much despite liking Moon), but this is looking more and more like a hard pass.

Edited to fix spacing.