FantasiaWHT

That's way too late, the fad will be over.

Are you sure they didn't trademark "Castlevania and Metal Gear Solid" for a crossover?

Japan awful. Europe gets the nod over NA because the yellow is angry and the blue is chill.

This looks so just all over the place. Seems implausible that trying to do this many things in one game is going to be good.

Yep, murdering people, torturing people, totally fine to have in a video game. But suggest somebody treat a woman badly...

Neither is great, they're both way too busy. Slight nod to the NA version because the Japanese one is so generic it could be for any Kirby game.

Ouf, is there an option for Japanese VOs? If not, I might be playing with sound down, which is unfortunate. Not a fan of these voices, everything seems like they're going for maximum stereotype.

@HeadPirate Thanks for talking about that! TWEWY is in my top 5 games of all time and I didn't even know that.

Oh man, my favorite is last

@Caryslan FFVI is #3 on the list...

This is interesting. Grew up with 1, 4, and 6. Both 7 and 10 I put off a long time because I didn't think either was interesting. Eventually played 7 and thought it was an awful game. That made me reeeeeally delay 10, but eventually I got to it and I actually enjoyed it. Still didn't like only having 3 characters at a time, but I thought it was very well done.

@timp29 That was my first question too. I'm not sure that dollar sales is all that useful anyway, give me actual units.

"It sold relatively well, but only managed about half the sales of its predecessor". Isn't that literally the opposite of relatively? You're comparing it to something else saying it did well, but compared to the other thing it did much worse.

Anyway, this is a fascinating game, I agree. I strongly disliked OoT so for the longest time I didn't play MM because of that. I eventually picked it up on... WiiWare, I think. I found it really interestingly, but frustrating. I would probably give it a try again if it gets a remake or if I suddenly find myself with a lot of time on my hands. Say in 30 years when I retire! =D

Wish this was on 3DS, I want to play this in bed and I get cramps trying to hold the Switch there.

Reminds me a lot of 999, Zero Escape, and VLR.

@Jeaz "They are predatory and to 100% exist for the sellers benefit." The millions of people who spend money on these things would disagree with you.

Look, this is a Top 5 games of all time game for me. But this looks like a really low-rent application, like they just grabbed screen caps from the game and added some really basic (and ugly) animations to it. I'm worried.

@Baker1000 Bravely Default was bad and longwinded.

The world needs more Octopath and less Bravely Default

I love these kind of games (Fortune Street, Dokapon Kingdom, Culdcept). Is any of this IP available in the west?

@mauhlin12 that question explains what's going on in a nutshell. It's too much work for copyright holders to go after individual streamers and tell them to stop, so they threaten (excuse me, "negotiate with") the whole platform in order to get them to do something that address the problem on a higher level.

@Kidfunkadelic83 I apparently have reading problems, I thought you wrote "IF" it's free, not "AS" it's free. My bad!

@Kidfunkadelic83 It's free.

This seems awesome! Especially barbarians becoming city states over time. Going to dive back in.

Random person makes random speculation. HEADLINE!

Please stop pretending that guesses are news.

@Varkster I mean, for Fire Emblem to explode in popularity, they had to turn it into The Sims (oh and some fighting).

Wow, I guess that gamble paid off. Honestly though it's why my family stopped playing Animal Crossing NH. Seemed designed specifically to make it very unfun to play with multiple people on the same Switch. I guess for a lot of people that encouraged them to spend another $300 instead of leave off.

Island of the Blue Lagoon meets Zelda?

@Krisi Beat me to it

Anybody else disturbed by how Marty stares out of the screen at you?

Oh I love the idea of government deciding how I exercise, what a great idea.

I'll amend my earlier comment though, ***** the police who make ***** up and needlessly interfere with people's personal lives.

Seriously, a cop sees a person walking alone by themselves, even if they stop to catch something - that idiot cop just increased the risk of COVID spread by having that interaction.

@Iggy-Koopa Except what they were doing was permitted. ***** the police.

If I ever get sick of Slay the Spire (which is seeming less and less likely), I will pick up Dicey Dungeons, but I have a hard time seeing myself actively playing both.

I don't like any of them. Europe is way too busy and NA/Japan's dead character is in a very sexually-suggestive pose.

@Kabloop Even assuming there have been no threats like this, or if there were, they weren't large enough to necessitate a response... I still appreciate the developer's commitment to artistic expression. It's like the Chicago statement on academic freedom. They didn't have to be under specific threat for that to be the right thing to do.

I... wut? Huh?

adds more junk to meet arbitrary minimum character requirement

They both suck, I refuse to vote.

@Big_Fudge Agreed. I really can't stand the modern formula. Awakening started to annoy me a bit. Fates I gave up 2/3 of the way through. I hesitantly started 3H (my son bought it) and quit in the prologue. I know it's popular and I'm not going to be mad at them for making games that sell more, but I do want to do what I can to make it clear there's still a market for more strategy-focused iterations. Echoes was great.

This game is definitely not great, but it's fine, and I'll enjoy the mental challenge it presents.

I think this holds up just fine for an NES game. You said yourself it was literally the very first strategy game like this on a console. I think they did remarkably well with it for the time. It's completely worth the price of admission. A few quick responses to your review:

"The boarding school drama or dating sim aspects of later releases . . . are all but absent here". GOOD. My son bought 3 houses and I couldn't get through the prologue.

"monochromatic sprites" - That's just wrong, as demonstrated BY YOUR OWN PICTURE. Sheesh.

Back in my PS1 RPG glory days, I was obsessed with Tales of Destiny 2. So different from what was the norm for an RPG at the time. I think I played a couple more and slowly lost interest in the series at is started to seem a soulless factory of titles.

I wonder if this is "Chinese people are in an uproar" or "Chinese government is in an uproar". The latter seems much more likely but it's hard to tell the difference.

As much as I personally didn't enjoy AC:NH (bought it EAGERLY during lockdown and yet nobody in the family played it for more than a couple weeks) I think it easily deserves GOTY.

@KomrathDE Exactly my thought after watching 30 seconds

"Sony, in particular, often comes in for criticism for obscuring any cheekiness it doesn't want on PlayStation. Nintendo has been more lenient in many cases"

At what point did that switch? Wasn't Nintendo always the family-friendly prudes and Sony (and MS) more adult?

"It was green" I lold.

"requiring a fair balance of guesswork . . ."

Somebody doesn't understand nonograms work.

Read this thread for recommendations, picked up a few games for the Thanksgiving travels and holiday! Kids (and me) already loving Pikuniku. Gris looks great too, and also grabbed Minit.

Anybody else think they're trying way too hard?

Europe's is awful. Bad color, way too busy. Also, "Instruction Booklet Included"??? Wasn't that the default then? It would be a selling point now...

Japan's makes much better use of the same image from Europe, and I like it, but the simplicity of NA's is great, I think.

#1 - Is this list updating in real time? I opened the first page, and then maybe 20 minutes later went to the second page and some of the games on the first page had moved to the second.

#2 - "Final Fantasy V expanded the series' job system and came to the West in TOSE's 2006 GBA port Final Fantasy V Advance." Nope. FFV came to the west on the Playstation in 1999 as part of Final Fantasy Anthology.

@GamingTelescope There was some trick to doing that, right? I think it wasn't a game settings option? Did you have to change your whole console to Japanese?