Kestrel

I still don't really get what this game is. A 2.5D platformer? An action game? A bunch of QTE mini-games? And Adventure game? What is it?

I'd gladly pay $400, maybe even $500, just to be able to play regular Switch games at a stable 30fps/1080p. That's all I want from the next generation – the bare minimum.

That and maybe an XCX expanded remaster as a launch title.

If Ghost Trick counts, then so does Trails to Azure; and if Trails to Azure counts, then the best character of the year is no contest at all — it's Estelle Bright.

lol, yeah, the Gothic series can be a lot of fun... but also very janky, even by contemporary standards. They're definitely worth playing if you're fond of the genre and want to play some forgotten classics, but otherwise... yup, I don't see anyone playing Gothic in 2023 for the first time having a good time, either.

I love the game, but of all those "forgotten classics," the early-era 3D ones are among the hardest to appreciate anew today, I think. At least short of the even older DOS and early-windows RPGs that lack mouse support (what a nightmare).

RPGs are one of my hyperfixations, so I've made an effort to play... pretty much every single one that was ever worth playing — or, if not, plan to in the future. The Gothic series is one I definitely wouldn't want to play on consoles... do that on PC, where you have so many more options to make the whole experience easier on yourself.

Though if you DO want to play classic RPGs on Switch, I can say that the NS ports of the old Infinity Engine games are a surprisingly excellent experience, though it is a bit of a shame not to have access to mods, especially BG1's NPC Project.

Can't say that teaser makes me feel very optimistic... a big part of what made the Tenkaichi games so great (beyond the enormous character rosters) was how closely they replicated the look and feel of the anime. Whatever art style they're going for here... ain't that.

Cool that Street Pass will still work, guess I might still have a chance.... bought a 3DS at launch and never got even 1.

Hm... I dunno. Feels like the series has been sliding downhill since D4. Maybe I'll pick it up on a sale? Demo certainly made it seem more playable than D6, but I can't exactly say anything about it hooked me.

@MattmanForever Still not sympathetic. Don't preorder games, don't preorder DLC, and if you do, don't be surprised if you wind up getting ripped off.

I get where they're coming from, but at this point I have very little sympathy when people buy something that does not exist, based on the promise that it will eventually exist, getting upset when said thing stubbornly persists in not existing.

I'm a bit confused about the premise for Origins. You're framed for a crime you were planning to commit anyway? Why would that be a big deal? Why would they care about clearing their name if they were going to kill the guy themselves, anyway?

Also, minor correction: MonolithSoft isn't really known for open-world JRPGs. They only ever made exactly one of those, and statistically very few people are likely to have ever played it.

You know how after every big, successful gaming console, Nintendo gets super arrogant and then their next platform flops?

Apropos of nothing, I'm sure.

Too many games this summer. I can't keep up.

I just want some mechs again....

Very well deserved, but it won't last — like TotK, it's gonna wind up getting come contrarian takes, too, to lower the metascore.

@Astral-Grain Hope you didn't sprain anything moving those goalposts so fast.

@Astral-Grain I mean, I don't know what to tell you. Other than, you know, to point out the obvious: that you clearly haven't been paying attention if you never noticed all the people complaining about the Zelda remasters being obscenely overpriced.

@Maulbert This is a laughably ignorant take. I don't even know where to begin. I assume what you meant to say was that you don't care for his character design. Which is fine. That, at least, would be a valid opinion.

I'm not a huge fan of the DS remake's visual style, but looks pretty damned good for an NDS game in 3D, so it's hard to complain about. But the main thing giving the remake the edge over the original, or the remaster, is the simple fact that it's actual, physical proof that Square-Enid is fully capable of faithfully remaking a game. Fully revealing everything they've done with FFVII for the marketing-driven BS that it is.

I haven't used any glitches, but I do kinda resent Nintendo patching them out, especially if they're not doing anything to fix the game's economy. Grinding for resources and money is so incredibly tedious that I don't think I'll ever replay the game — and if I do, it'll only be on an emulator if and when I can cheat a bit.

Like fully half my playtime so far has been spent either farming Zonaite in the depths for auto-build, or farming prime meat in Hebra for rupees.

It's not hard to be the "best Star Ocean game) when the average quality is so, so low. Only two of 'em are any good.

@Picola-Wicola They're at the Zonaite Forges in the Depths. The forges are great big structures, you can't miss them. You also have several boss fights at them in for the Yiga quest.

Did you know that you can use Recall to freeze time and reverse the motion of any object?

130+ hours in the game so far and I keep forgetting that ability exists.

I'd say TotK is in the running for the least scary Zelda game. It's waaaaaay too empowering for the player ever really feel threatened for more than that initial moment. The only thing that really shifts that dynamic is the darkness in the depths, but that goes away as soon as you light it up, and then it's just another open world map, only much more boring.

@GamingFan4Lyf Yeah, the grind is pretty crazy. I spent several hours up in Hebra grinding those big elk for their delicious, delicious meats (to cook and sell for profit). The "Hero's Path" of that region isn't even a cluster of lines now, it's just one big, solid green mass.

I earned around 10k rupees after all that, which allowed me to buy all of two armor sets.

Well, TotK has the same asinine level scaling as BotW, and I'm already at the point where I'm encountering enemies that even my strongest weapons take 40+ hits to kill. Will definitely be duping a lot of the better fusion parts so I can avoid as much of that tedium as possible.

I dunno, I feel like 10 years doesn't really qualify as a "long time" to support a product. That's pretty much just one console generation.

@Tyranexx Ahaha... no problem.

One very last thing for you to consider (or at least keep tucked away in the very back of your mind): the second game of each duology (all the way up to CS4) winds up reusing the vast majority of the assets from the first game (like 95%). And if you push on through to The 3rd... there's that same re-use. So it's generally better (IMHO) to put some space in-between the games to avoid burnout.

If you've played the Yakuza games, where nearly every one has you spending most of your time in a very slightly modified version of Kamurocho, it's kinda like that.

(And I should also hasten to add that you shouldn't feel the need to commit yourself to the series as a whole beyond the first two games. Everything after SC is increasingly YMMV, and the series takes a hard-turn after Azure from being primarily character-driven to primarily plot-driven. A lot of people really love the Cold Steel games regardless, and I do think the gameplay is an enormous improvement over the older games, and the character writing remains good, but the plot? Well, I'll just say that if SC is in the #1 spot on my list, none of the CS games would crack the top 50. (And yes, I am precisely autistic enough to have an actual list.)

The point is: well, despite my effusion of praise, maybe don't set your expectations too high for the series as a whole. Ah, well, I suppose that's applicable for everything in life.

Actually, the real point is TEARS OF THE KINGDOM IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN IT HAS ANY RIGHT TO BE, and it is going to devour our collective free time in the coming days to the point that every other game may as well not exist.

I mean, goddamn.

@KayFiOS It wouldn't exactly be unprecedented (still waiting on that Mario Odyssey DLC) but, man, it'll suck if we don't get any for TotK, either. Might be something for them to hold onto for an updated rerelease on the next generation console, though.

@Tyranexx Yeah, I can already tell Tears of the Kingdom is gonna dominate a lot of my gaming time over the next few years... truly a monstrous game.

Anyway, yeah, that mixed feedback isn't entirely undeserved. FC is very much a slow burn, low-stakes story (which is something I love, but even as someone who loves it... it can be a bit too slow at times) and this was greatly exacerbated in the original (overseas) PSP release which also had very slow combat that took a while to load in and out of. Subsequent editions have sped things up quite a bit across the board, and even have a "turbo mode" that doubles the animation speed for combat. Makes the game faaaaaaar more tolerable.

But some of that mixed reception also comes from misplaced expectations. This isn't an RPG where you'll save the world or defeat some great evil... nor is it one where you'll spend much time diving into dungeons (apart from the final dungeon, the only proper dungeon areas are those 4 towers — of which, again, three are entirely optional).

As you might guess from my whole vibe here, the Trails series is a set of games I hold on very high regard. I even consider Trails in the Sky SC to be the finest JRPG ever made — but the first time I played FC? I bounced off it. Played for maybe a half dozen hours (at most) and then lost interest.

Couple years later, I came back, gave it another go. Then I finished it, and while I liked it, I didn't love it. A solid 7/10. But on the post-SC replay? More like an 8 or 9.

The point is: this series requires an enormous investment to get into — time, attention, money — and, especially at first, it can come across as... not that great. In light of my own comments here, you might think it underwhelming, or overhyped. But I think that if you keep going, there's a very good chance you could wind up thinking of the Trails in the Sky games as highly as I do.

Tried this several times and only got it to work once... when I was experimenting w/ a different sequence (IE not following instructions)... and then I promptly forgot what I'd done.

For rupee farming, I'm thinking Zelda Amiibo will be more efficient, as their gear sells for 600 apiece.

@blindsquarel I can't say that's the only reason I'm subbed to NSO at the moment... but honestly I don't find MK8 online all that much better than playing versus AI.

Also, PSA: you can only buy these things with an active, paid subscription. Can't do it w/ the free trial.

Neat, actual details.

Can't wait to lose myself in the game come tomorrow... though I may be stuck waiting. Turns out that the human body can be a real crap vessel, huh? Today I've gone through an unusually high dosage of painkillers (I'm disabled, not an addict) and the pains on,y just now receding to the point where I feel normal. I suspect I'll be pretty out of it all weekend (side-effects from the heavier stuff are pretty awful: exhaustion, extreme drowsiness, difficulty focusing, difficulty w/ memory, and, of course, extremely grotesque nighttmarea).

Am I oversharing? I dunno. Maybe. Probably. I'm bad at this. Got plenty of problems and the above ain't even the top one.

Anyway, the point is: y'all, please. I am begging you — all of you — please be excited and ecstatic and have the time of your life running around Hyrule setting things on fire tomorrow in my stead.

@Tyranexx No shame in a belated reply (unless you're gonna be a weirdo like that one guy). Glad I could help. I love Falcom games but, man, they can be hard to recommend due to how intimidating they can appear to be. Even the pretty simple, straightforward, mostly standalone games like Ys can seem impenetrable to newcomers with the nonlinear timeline and various remakes and what have you.

Anyway, I hope I'm responding to this quickly enough — and that you'll see it quickly enough — that I can give you one piece of crucial advice for FC. Basically, there are a bunch of optional (sometimes easily missable) quests and dialog sequences. On your first playthrough? You don't really need to worry about 'em. Except for one. During the tutorial, you'll climb up a big ol' Zemurian Tower and meet a certain NPC at the top (Professor Alba, iirc). There are three other similar towers in the game, and you're not required to visit any of them — they're all optional. Further, if you climb to the top of them at the right time (usually as soon as you can first access them) you'll meet that NPC again at their summits. Those sequences will provide you with most of the "deep lore" worldbuilding stuff, and you'll get a LOT more out of the ending if you see all of those sequences than if you don't.

So I'd highly advise making an effort to see those. And maybe save often, in multiple slots, because sometimes those windows are very narrow and easy to miss.

Beyond that, don't worry about optional content. Trails in the Sky FC is one of the very few games — very few pieces of media in general, I'd say — where it actually gets better on a subsequent playthrough. Put simply, Trails in the Sky SC does a whole heckuva lot to recontextualize a lot of FC's content, imbuing what maybe at first seemed to be fairly innocuous characterization (or even padding) with layers of additional meaning and context. If you enjoy SC, I would highly recommend playing through FC again afterwards, only then aiming for 100%.

(EDiT: just for some further personal context... I can count on one hand the number of media I'd actually recommend playing/watching/reading/listening to more than once. It is not something I suggest often or lightly, especially for something that's as huge of a time commitment as a 60-hour RPG.)

(Also don't be too disappointed if FC doesn't immediately click for you. My experience with the duology was that FC felt like a 7/10 the first time through, then SC an awesome 10/10 that elevated FC to a 9/10 for me on my second playthrough.)

The King of Red Lions is the only good Royal because he's the only one actually providing a benefit to society — transportation.

@molkom Yeah, no. Copyright doesn't work that way. If it did, the entire video game industry would've collapsed decades ago.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law/publications/landslide/2014-15/march-april/its_how_you_play_game_why_videogame_rules_are_not_expression_protected_copyright_law/#

@Varkster I mean, one of the most common complaints of BotW was the lack of "rewards" to find while exploring — basically just Korok Seeds and weapons, or the occasional rare ingredient. Zonai parts would seem to be a very handy solution to that complaint.

@carlos82 I'm thinking of it this way: the gacha machines are, in and of themselves, something that rewards exploration — you have to find them before you can use them, yeah? And for that exploration you're rewarded with vehicle parts. But there can only be so many machines (they are quite big) — and there will certainly be far more treasure chests scattered throughout Hyrule (and, who knows, maybe we'll finally see a second type of container) — and vehicle parts would add some really nice variety to the expected weapons/rupees/ingredients.

If the reception to BotW has taught us anything, I think it's that many players care a weirdly extreme amount about extrinsic rewards.

@epicgamner the heck? So you can only store the gacha parts? That... doesn't make much sense to me. Are there two versions of each part, then? One you can only use once, and other you can pick up and re-use whenever ya' like? Seems kinda redundant.

It doesn't seem like the gacha will be a bad thing in TotK... but I don't really see how it's a good thing, either. If the parts are already in the world, why do we need vending machines? And if the answer is that it gives you more parts and a greater variety of parts to play around with... doesn't that disincentivize exploration?

They ever get around to finishing KOTOR2?

@Ara Gotta love people who go on social media to talk about how much they hate and/or never use social media.

I don't know that it's fair to call her a bad voice actor due to her portrayal of Zelda. I think the issues with her performance are more likely a result of how she was directed. She's definitely affecting a kind of very high-pitched, regal tone which isn't something that just happens by accident.

Gotta keep in mind that these performances are always directed. If any of y'all have played many JRPGs, you're probably (very) familiar with the English voiceovers completely butchering Japanese nouns... which, on the face of it, is very odd, since Japanese is a phonetic language and the correct pronunciation is always gonna be right there on the page. Is it because the actors are ignorant or apathetic? Maybe sometimes, but I've seen enough of 'em on Twitter specify that they were specifically instructed to mispronounce things by the Voiceover director(s).

And at least in terms of Zelda's pitch, that very light, high-pitched voice is very closely associated with the Yamato Nadeshiko archetype, and I could easily see it being mandated from the Nintendo higher-ups who simply don't understand how that association does not exist outside of Japan.

I've never been one to care about spoilers, so I looked into a few of the leaks. All I can say is that TotK looks like exactly the game you'd reasonably expect it to be as a sequel to Breath of the Wild and based on the gameplay demo. Folks who've spent that past 6 years moaning about various pet-peeves in BotW are unlikely to be much happier with TotK, everyone else will be ecstatic.

So basically I don't know anything now that I didn't already know before I spoiled myself.

Just beat BotW a few minutes ago. Wonder if TotK will last me 6 years, too?

@DavidMac It's not "tricks" it's just optimization, and it's what every developer ought to be doing. When you see 100GB+ download sizes, it's because the developers aren't bothering to even compress the files — which is really the bare minimum. BRDs can fit that much data, so they don't bother. Any shortcut they can take, they will take.

Eh, given how low-effort the existing PC interaction is, I think it might be a better idea for them to just axe that whole concept entirely — just keep every character story separate from the others, like LAL. This could even allow them to do some more interesting things within those narratives, as they could have NPCs refer to what the other characters are up to on their routes. Like maybe PC1 is an apothecary visiting a town that's been damaged by some disaster, and then part of PC2's story involves causing that disaster (or attempting to mitigate it).

I dunno. Obviously it would be nice if we could form a proper 8-character PARTY in these games, but they seem so actively disinterested in that I don't see much hope for it ever happening. And it's not like there aren't various NPCs in the Octo2 routes, for example, that could become party members for those stories. Or, hell, they could even just do a Mercury system that let ya' hire out whoever — faceless, voiceless mercs are always easier to swallow than fully-realized characters who spend all of their time together pointedly NOT talking to each other.

Something like the FF Pixel Remasters might be cool — taking the game and just modernizing the visuals and UI to feel a bit more in line with modern sensibilities.

But a full-on remake? I dunno. I feel like fully half of the games in the series could qualify as remakes, or at least reimagining, of the original game. But also Breath of the Wild is pretty much exactly what Zelda 1 would look like if it were remade today... which probably explains why the BotW prototypes were made in the NES style.

@romanista Maybe not, they're using the word incorrectly. A denouement is a part of dramatic storytelling structure referring to the "winding down" part of a story between the climax and conclusion — or in RPG terms, the denouement is everything between the death of the final boss and the credits rolling.

If this DLC added to or modified XC3's vanilla ending in any way, it might be an appropriate word to use, but from the context of the review it sounds like it's 100% a separate, self-contained prequel story. A prequel story that by itself may contain a denouement, but cannot in and of itself be a denouement to the game proper.

I suspect there were some crossed wired as they meant to say something like "capstone" or "swan song" since it's the grand(?) finale(?) of the trilogy.

@Deemo37 Amazing how confident you are that you were able to correctly interpret both my personal standards game performance as well as how excited I am for TotK from a post that was about neither.

Please don't make assumptions like that. It's really annoying.