CoastersPaul

Yeah, that's about what I expected. I've tried Partitio the Merchant and Ochette the Hunter's opening chapters in the demo, and there's a lot of improvements here and there I really like. If you like Octopath 1 at all, like I did, it's more of that, and better; seems like a worthy sequel! If you hated 1, though, I can't imagine 2 changing your mind.

Hope that means they finally give the next Sonic game enough budget and time. He's still a decently big mascot in spite of everything, and Sega should act like it.

@Coxula I mean, I know the HD-2D style isn't for everybody and even for me the depth-of-field can be a little much, but the difference is that these games are making a deliberate style, not just smearing old sprites. The actual sprites remain sharp when they're in focus!

Now I wonder how much of the support stuff is art - do they just have dozens of artists on standby after wrapping most of a Xenoblade and it's like "okay, sure, we can have them whip up some models for you while we're at it"

Scarlet/Violet's performance feels like the biggest proof I've seen that even Nintendo's second-party developers were maybe expecting a more powerful Switch by now.
Unfortunately not all developers have the time or ability to squeeze BotW-like performance out of old hardware, so a boost would be nice if they don't want everything but first-party titles falling behind.

Live A Live's about the only game I've actually played this year. It's good, though! Play it!
I've joked about it really being a 1994 game, which makes it even being up for 2022 game lists great. But I think the ending here, which wasn't fully present in the original, would make it a true GOTY contender on its own.

@BlackenedHalo I think a lot of the love for 6 comes down to the US only getting 1, 4, and 6. 6 ("3") must've seemed like a huge step forward from 4 ("2"), with just generally more.
Whereas if you play chronologically you'd know some of the "new" stuff in 6 actually came from 5, and if you liked the job system 6 would seem like a step back from 5, instead of just naturally expanding on 4.

I wonder if Live-A-Live's hit any milestones since the 500k sales back in September, because it absolutely deserves more eyes on it too

OCTOPATH 2 BABY GAME OF THE YEAR

okay, considering the first one I probably shouldn't get too hyped, but so far it seems to answer all my problems with the first (more character interaction! more unique abilities! world's so big you get to move a ship around yourself and there looks to be way more visual variety!) so I just can't control myself

Live A Live's about the only new game I've even played this year, but I think it absolutely deserves a spot.

General impressions I've gotten is that there's a pretty fun core in there with... some roughness around the edges, so I'm happy it sounds like they're planning to stick to that formula for a bit and make it better now that they've got a base to work from.

Hope Pokémon can do the same thing instead of randomly taking some steps back because they had to start working on the next one before they could take any lessons from the last one :/

Hope they hire the guy who played DJ Professor K for SiIvaGunner for something

I've always said this game needed more Rainbow Roads.

Twilight Princess is a solid game that’s not nearly as obsessed with being dark and edgy as it looks on the tin once you actually get a ways into it. Probably for the best they swung hard away from that-but-even-more, but good times.

BDG's the only person I've ever seen bring up the original Sonic lore.

The ship was the part of the first trailer where I absolutely lost my mind... ridiculously hyped now seeing ship exploration and battles. Hooting and hollering, like Partitio.

That'd... probably fix about every problem I had with it during the demo. Though I was starting to come around on the loop of "do your chores ASAP and then try to progress the dungeon far enough to unlock shortcuts for next time" ... but I don't think it'll suffer too much from a little extra time to move around.

@Gracetrack From what I've heard, Chrono Trigger had a pretty rough development that didn't come together until the end, and the Dream Team was largely a marketing gimmick. But there probably has been some over-correction; the DQ and FF influences are obvious, and Toriyama's character design is, of course, even more so. A shame CT has to come up in contention for the release of two much more obscure games.

What I'd most want out of an Octopath 2 is stories brought together a little more by the end of the game itself, I think, rather than only really being connected by the post-game. Let the game acknowledge other characters are there in the latter parts! Oh, and maybe an airship.

But I definitely enjoyed the first.

I blame Temple of Doom for all the mine carts, honestly

I'm just lazy. Keep meaning to get around to it eventually but have been busy with tons of other games, and an official release would at least give me a reminder (maybe toplay the fan translation instead anyway!)

Wait, this site has a pink style for Kirby? I love it!

@Shredderlovespizza As someone who generally just plays turn-based stuff, Neo TWEWY's my favorite take on action RPG with way too many characters, because it takes it down to one button (of your choice, based on which move you equipped) to switch characters and use their move ... and then eventually you get up to 6 buttons to press and it's ridiculous but somehow just manageable, and it feels great when it works.

Atlus knows they've been pretty niche, they're absolute masters of getting as much style as possible for as cheaply as possible, no way very good sales broke the bank.

@RubyCarbuncle People here are voicing their objections against paying $60 for a 9-year-old remaster of a 20-year-old game. And, fair!

But I never got to play Wind Waker. So as hard of an ask as $60 is... I'm definitely not paying $90 to play the original on my Wii. And that disc was a killer deal compared to other prices I've seen! (I still curse my past self for not looking harder for it years ago - and also not picking up a Wii copy of Prime Trilogy when I saw it on shelves, before everyone started caring about Metroid again.)

It's possible buying a used Wii U and getting it on the e-Shop might actually come out to less than that. Still probably over $60, though... for one game.

So if Nintendo actually wants my money, they should probably just move it over to the Switch as well. And everyone who's already played it - well, they don't have to buy it again!

Wild!

(okay take some more characters, how am I supposed to have anything more to add after that though)

Saw someone suggest that Mario is Mario's maiden name, which is funny enough I'm going to accept it as canon.

Really weird they haven't been rushing to change up wildly selling kids' games.

Man, growing up on Wii and PC, BotW was my first time having to deal with camera controls. I'm sure kids these days can handle it, but it's easy to forget how much of a jump that is for people not used to it. I think that's more why they stuck with fixed views for so long than anything.

Would love to be catered to more, but ultimately I'm not the main audience. There's plenty of meatier RPGs out there; Pokémon is, more than anything, a gateway.

From what I've heard, despite all the fancy graphics... this and 0.2 might've been the easiest ports, since they're made in Unreal instead of PS2-specific nonsense; wild they missed so hard on all of this.

there's a chance it's just an icon and there's also a cooler logo on the title screen and such, I suppose?

heh. "Dangerous Seed."

I get the impression that OG VII's fine - pretty good, even! - but has gotten so hyped up and sort of become a baseline that it doesn't have a hope of impressing new players nearly as much.

I don't believe it.

Anyway, could someone predict a bunch of new F-Zero tracks for me instead? Thanks!

Big RPG year for me.Took me 48 hours this year to beat Final Fantasy IX (I think it's on sale again now, and absolutely worth the sale price!) and 43 hours hasn't even seen me to the end of Neo TWEWY.

Surprised - but very happy - Neo TWEWY made it to the top 10 here. Sad it didn't sell better - I think it's super underrated - but easily my personal GOTY!

Then again, the only other things I've really played were Metroid Dread (have enjoyed what little I've played so far, but had trouble keeping at it) and Animal Crossing 2.0, so hardly an exhaustive list

@EliteXeos It literally was, and they weren't? About as neutral as here, really, with commenters chiming in about how greedy and arrogant Xecuter had gotten - enough even the rest of the hacking community was kind of glad to see them go: https://kotaku.com/1847979149

Kotaku has its problems, absolutely, but so much of the hate I see for it seems so disconnected from anything real. It's not gonna kill anyone (okay, maybe the excess number of ads legitimately might! ) to occasionally see the articles themselves instead of repeating a whole mythos mostly based on some particularly awful headlines getting bounced around social media.

This was first announced a good bit back, so there is a blog that probably has a bit more details on the gameplay, for anyone looking. https://www.cassettebeasts.com/

Think there was a first reveal trailer floating around a while back, too.

@mazzel That was at least in the original, just cut out of the English version. Guess they figured they couldn't keep it as that now that you can actually see below the water.

I've always had a little trouble getting carts to stay in on my old Switch - is it better at that because of this, at least?

That trailer really felt like a Platinum Cinematic Universe.

@mohr365 @BloodNinja Well, I, for one, was interested to find this out, as I believe the SNES controller only had two tiny ZL/ZR buttons also used for the menu. Nice to know this one's a little more feature-complete.

Well. Certainly hope some people are going to be eating their words now, but hardly expecting it!

Anyway, I've really enjoyed Ch. 2 from what I've played so far. Absolutely go play it if you liked Ch. 1, it's great!

@twztid13 Chapter 1 also didn't get a Switch release until (literally four months!) later, consoles have a whole certification and rating process to go through - you can't just drop a program on a site on a whim, and it could get leaked and ruin the surprise - and there's some bugs that needed ironing out anyway, I don't see anything weird here.
In due time!

@Vyacheslav333 and here I am, desperately wanting to be able to play Fantasian.

Video game orchestration's fun because they can throw electric guitars in with the orchestra, or mix chiptune and synth beeps and boops with regular instruments, and you just don't get that sound much!

Are we counting the hotel box with Mario Kart 64, F-Zero, and DKC2? ... and if so, as what? MK64 definitely the first and biggest draw there, for me.

Other than that, my first console was a Wii so probably Wii Sports was the first thing we booted up.

@Haruki_NLI I was getting constant ads for it for a while here in the US, so clearly they've been doing some marketing; I just don't get why they think I can single-handedly buy enough copies to make it a hit!

@HeadPirate 14 years, to the exact date (as far as I can tell), since TWEWY's JP release.

Far cooler than being on a Friday.

Really hope NEO TWEWY does well this week! Been loving it so far!