Dualmask

Seems some developers don't get that if you're going to make a protagonist have a voice, s/he should be likeable. Protagonist personalities matter--they might have gotten a few bonus points just by going the mute hero route.

Dang. That's pricey, but I want it...Thoroughly enjoyed the Trails in the Sky and Cold Steel series, and I'm interested in playing more games from that world.

Oof, that character art. The out-of battle tile maps. But then...the music. The battles. It's got just as much good as bad.

Tentative curiosity.

Pretty much a guaranteed buy as long as it runs as smoothly as it did on PS3.

I took a chance on it. I'd say it's about a 5/6 out of ten. It works, but the jumping and combat are really clunky. There's no real tactics or strategy to the combat; blocking is useless because by the time you let go of it to attack, you're already getting hit. So I just mash buttons and hope for the best...seems to work.

The music is nice and the character moves quickly enough. Once you get used to the odd controls, it's not so bad. I've played worse. I really wish they would have just used one or two buttons for attacking--really didn't need four face buttons for all that when two with added directions would have done the trick. Jumping with ZR and accessing inventory with R is just weird, especially while the minus button goes unused. It needs the option to remap the buttons...

That being said, for some reason or another I find it engaging enough. Definitely won't win any awards but I wasn't bored so far. And it's got a little sex appeal, always a plus.

Demoniaca: Everlasting Night is the only game shown that interests me at all. Seems to have everything I'm looking for in an action game.

I don't even know what funk means. I'm a total stiff...

But this game looks kind of funky and I'm diggin' it.

Even if I were the most accommodating gamer on the planet, even if I had even a remote interest in this title, I could look past every other problem except one. Not allowing Y-axis invert in any 3D game with camera control, especially a FPS, is a cardinal sin that cannot be forgiven. That's right up there with un-skippable cut scenes.

Like, how do you even release a game without considering that? It's an option in 99.9% of 3D games for a reason.

Got nearly half wrong, on account of how few of these games I actually played. Banjo-Kazooie was the one that I guessed correctly.

Mildly intrigued by this game, more intrigued by Pixel Game Maker MV...I'd never heard of that before. Looks interesting.

So they expect folks to pay as much as a Switch itself for a screen for the Switch that kills what's arguably its most valuable feature, portability?

I wonder what they were smoking.

This game is actually a lot of fun, even if it's not the best SR game. For the price, if you never played it, it's more than worthwhile.

But for me, it would be a triple-dip, so I'll pass.

I'm thinking I want to give this a try.

The loading time was one of the few things holding me back from a buy. Glad to read they (ostensibly) fixed it.

This looks like my kind of game.

This is extremely good news. The game is one of the best fighters ever. I put many, many hours into it on PS3. Will definitely be double-dipping.

The SNES is my favorite game hardware design of all time (next to the Switch). Great article, what a legend.

I didn't find the game to be that hard once I got into the groove. But other games grabbed my attention before I could finish it. Maybe I'll just start over to check out the new content.

I like some of the features of Souls-like games, and have played my share. Interestingly, I have never played a single game from the original 'Souls' series. Maybe one day.

As far as this list goes, Salt and Sanctuary, 3000th Duel and Blasphemous are my picks.

I love Furi too, but I'm not sure it belongs on this list. Punishing combat is pretty much the only thing it has in common...

I'm a big fan of Mai. But not that big. I can think of many, many things I'd rather do with $1000.

A new Metroidvania, and it has an actual attractive-ish human, female protagonist that has normal proportions? Looks great, sign me up.

Metroidvanias are my faves. Never stop making them.

Maybe I'm old, maybe I'm weird, but I've been gaming since the days of the Atari 7800 and had every major console and handheld... and I have never, ever been bothered by the frame rate in any game to the point of complaining about it. I've seen differences, sure, but it has never affected my enjoyment of a game. It barely registers for me.

When I read reviews, the frame rate topic doesn't affect my decision no matter the genre.

I love Joe Mad's art direction, I liked Battle Chasers: Nightwar and Arcane made me want to pay more attention to the LoL universe than even all the great fan art online did.

So I think I'm going to get this.

This whole article is hilarious and disturbing at the same time.

Another thing I wanted to add: folks mentioned that the game has similarities to Hyper Light Drifter. There's actually a chip (the primary means of customizing your build) that reloads gun ammo with melee attacks called the Drifter Chip, which I thought was a nice little addition.

I've been playing this for a while and it really is great. I'm surprised the reviewer didn't make any comparisons to classic Zelda games, which is what this game feels more like to me. There are dungeons with special items needed to complete them, the view is top-down; heck, there's even a spin attack and a hookshot item. Zelda was the first thing I thought about when playing this, not 'Metroidvania'.

Also, for anyone on the fence, you can actually set the game to Explorer mode and turn off the timers if you want to just play the game as a more classic adventure game experience, but that does remove much of the challenge and uniqueness of the gameplay. Still, that feature alone made the game worthwhile for me, especially since the game is designed to be replayed and speed-run.

The 'rogue-like' feature of the game is minor--you lose half your money when you die, but you can retrieve it. That can actually be offset by the way you set up your character's build...you can make it so that you don't lose your money (or go for broke and massively increase how much money you make in exchange for the risk of losing it all when you die with no chance to get it back). Other than that, death just returns you to the last save point with your progress intact.

I enjoyed Super Valis IV. Always wanted to know more about the series.

This is upsetting--I was looking forward to playing these games on the go. I've been there and done that with these games on TV-based consoles already. The only reason I wanted to get them was for the portable factor.

But the Switch itself is not to blame for this. Plenty of older re-releases/remasters/ports look and run fine on the console. This is solely on the efforts of the devs, or lack thereof.

I missed out on this when it was new. I've actually had a free version available on, of all things, my Amazon Fire tablet for years, and I have a copy on Steam, but I never booted it up. I think it might be too dated for me despite being great overall...I'll just wait for the remake at this point.

After playing the demo, I decided to give it a pass. Like someone else said, the pace was just too slow. I loved the art and the narration was great for a while, and the whole concept of cards was interesting, but I like my RPGs a bit more...efficient.

I played one entry in the series and it seemed enjoyable enough. Nothing amazing, but no real problems or flaws with the story or gameplay. Very safe, inoffensive tactics gameplay that can fill your time between bigger games.

I wouldn't pay more than $10-15 for it.

It's wild that MK8D is not just the best selling Switch game or the best selling Mario Kart game, but literally the best selling racing game there is.

Nice timing. I just finished Tales of Arise and I was wondering what RPG I was going to get into next. I don't have a ton of experience with the series, but I enjoyed SMT IV: Apocalypse on 3DS, as well as Devil Survivor and the Persona games, so I have a feeling I'll enjoy this just as much.

Based on the art alone...I think I'd rather look at the bunnies.

Looking at this makes me want to build a tabletop board game. Not sure I want to play this though.

Digging the art, and the gameplay sounds solid. I've played enjoyable RPGs with forgettable characters before. They can't all be Final Fantasy VI I guess...but that doesn't mean the game isn't worth playing. This one sounds like it'll be worth my time eventually. Perhaps I'll play it after I finish Tales of Arise.

This will be the one to get if my current Switch (which isn't even the updated battery model, but a true OG model) fails on me. But otherwise, it can wait.

That being said, I've used tablets with OLED screens the PS Vita originally had an OLED screen...it really is remarkable compared to the alternative.

@MARl0 no secret about it. I bought the first game, I'll buy the new one. It's cheap, silly fun and I'm all for it.

The previous game was a fun little diversion. Looks like they stepped up the art and the gameplay a bit.

I've had my eye on this for a minute. Looks like it might be fun. I'll wait for the review, but it's on my wishlist.

Darksiders hasn't been great since the beginning. The first game was one of my all time favorites, but for some reason part two bored me and part three, even more so. Oh well, such squandered potential.

Kind of makes me wish Nintendo would have made the Balance Board compatible with Switch. What a special piece of kit that was.

ActRaiser is one of my favorite games of all time, so I was really excited about this remake. I'm going to get it, but I think $30 is a bit steep for what's on offer. Hopefully it'll go on sale at some point.

Looks nice...I'm always eager for more pixel-based Metroidvanias.

Bayo 3, the Castlevania collection, Shadowrun Trilogy and Triangle Strategy (ugh, that name aside) are the highlights for me. Curious about a full 3D Kirby game too...as much as I love 2D games, they couldn't do that anymore with Kirby. That formula was run way into the ground, so I'm interested in seeing what's in store.

Anyone who plays MonHun could be certain an expansion was coming eventually, so no surprise there. Sunbreak will be a day one purchase for me.

Couldn't care less about the Genesis and N64 thing. There are other ways to play Genesis games and N64 was my least favorite Nintendo system ever, so that's a big fat meh to me.

I already have Clip Studio Paint on PC and ArtFlow on my Galaxy Tab, so I don't see much need for this personally. I might have felt compelled to mess around with it if it at least had blending modes and a bucket, but alas.

Sounds neat for a 'my first digital drawing tool' app though; if I had young children with Switch systems, I'd certainly consider it. Too many digital tools can become crutches, so the simpler, limited approach is probably better for learning.

Honestly haven't given it all that much thought, but under the general banner of game systems, yes, handhelds are a type of console. They're not really all that separate, just a different way of doing the same thing.

To me, games are games...I don't view handhelds as a lesser form of gaming as some others may.

To be honest, the moment I saw what the Switch was, I knew I wanted it. Nintendo's hardware philosophy has always appealed to me. I was never the big-power gamer, I like flexibility, and I actually prefer handhelds to playing on TV a lot of the time. A system that could fulfill both my desire for a comfortable handheld and go on TV when I wanted was a dream come true. Reminded me of the fun times my friends and I had playing GBA games on the Game Boy Player on 'Cube.

After the fact though, I do wish Joy-Cons were better made. Nintendo hardware used to be something to praise. Now, at least when it comes to controllers, my trust is eroded. The Pro Controller serves me well, but on the go I can only play with third party controllers.

@Oddball83 well said. I'm an old-school anime fan. I can't stand a lot of today's anime, or many of the games built around it, for exactly these reasons. It's become an unimaginative, mass-produced shell of its former self.

I thought the original had some nice ideas, but it got too frustrating for me to complete. That being said, this new game looks pretty good, I'll be keeping an eye out.