Kestrel

@JeanPaul Here's a basic rundown, but first? The short answer is NO. Reverie would be one of the worst places to start.

Generally speaking, the Trails series is divided up into multiple story arcs consisting of duologies, or pairs of games. Most duologies feature a (mostly) new cast of characters in a different region of the Zemuria continent, (often) in a slightly different time period. The first part of any duology is intended to introduce new players to the world and be a good jumping-on point, and for the most part they function well as such.

In addition to the duologies there are "gaiden" games — think of them as (very) extended epilogues for the preceding duology that also work to set up some stuff for the next duology. Gaidens can be considered optional, but many fans consider them to be among the best games in the series, so ignore them at your own risk.

(There are also spin-off games like Nayuta, but we don't need to get into them here).

So, to map everything out:

• Liberl Duology: Trails in the Sky & Trails in the Sky SC.
• Liberl Gaiden: Trails in the Sky The 3rd.
• Crossbell Duology: Trails from Zero & Trails to Azure.
• East Erebonia Duology: Trails of Cold Steel & Trails of Cold Steel 2
• West Erebonia Duology: Trails of Cold Steel 3 & Trails of Cold Steel 4.
• Erebonia/Crossbell Gaiden: Trails into Reverie
• Calvard Duology: look, it's complicated, and I haven't played these so who knows... but from what people have said, it's Kuro no Kiseki and Kuro no Kiseki 3, with the second game somehow being more like a Gaiden. Currently unavailable in English, though, so no need to worry about 'em.

On Nintendo Switch, you have two (unequal) options for entry points into the series: Trails of Cold Steel III and Trails from Zero. The former is a fine place to start the series, but far from ideal. The closest analog would be if "Infinity War" were your first MCU movie. Sure, it'd be a fun film, and you wouldn't have any trouble following it... but you also would really be able to appreciate the COPIOUS fanservice.

Therefore if you only have a Switch, start with Trails from Zero, then play Azure. After that, play whatever you like, just know that as in most things your experience with the series will be better if you consume the media in production order.

I just played the XEL demo a few days ago. Seemed pretty inoffensive to me. Not great, not awful, just super mid.

Seems like this is probably a case of the really Bads just not ranking in Metacritic because no one's bothering to review 'em.

Nothing for me this week, or this month. I, uh... went a bit overboard on Christmas shopping this year.

Will definitely be picking up Crisis Core and Dragon Quest Treasures in a month or two, though.

Not really sure what the "of varying quality" thing is supposed to signify. Dragon Quest proper is literally THE most consistent JRPG series out there. Virtually every single game in the series has ranked somewhere between "very good" and "timeless classic." There's a reason why it's a cultural juggernaut.

If you're just commenting on the spin-offs, that's fair, but you should say that.

@Miu I hope you get the chance! It's one of the best experiences I've ever had with games.

And also, to be perfectly honest, it kind of NEEDS a remaster. The UI is a confusing mess of menu elements and too-small text (nowhere near so bad, overall, as the first Xenoblade... but a far cry from the streamlines interfaces of XC2, XCR or XCR).

And while some people act like the second-screen thing would be difficult to translate to a different console, honestly all it really does is let you open up a menu while still playing the game. Easy enough to convert that into, you know, an actual menu that pauses the game while you mess around.

Addendum: quick PSA for anyone who might not have noticed or forgotten, while flying you can press L3 and R3 simultaneously to free fall. It is incredibly fun! Fly up as high as you can go (which is quite high) and then just fall all the way down!

Also: as good as the world is to explore, like... a huge chunk of what makes that exploration enjoyable isn't the world itself, it's the mechanics you use to explore. Like those old Miyamoto quotes about Mario say, the most important thing (in that case running and jumping) is for the principal mechanic of the game to feel perfect. And XCX really nails that.

On foot, you can run sprint incredibly fast and leap far higher than any human physically could (unaided). This keeps the early game interesting and you run and hop through the world, experimenting with platforming to access areas you maybe shouldn't be going. And then a third of the way through, you unlock the Skells, and suddenly you're whole perspective on the world shifts: you're bigger, faster, and far more dangerous. Towering monsters you once had no choice but to flee from now cower beneath you. Vast tracts of land that required long hikes to traverse can now be sped through with the Skell's motorcycle form — sure, the physics can be wonky, but who didn't spend hours just zooming about the world, picking up items and leaving overpowered boss-monsters eating your dust?

And then in the last third of the game, you get to FLY. And the "game feel" of the flight mechanics is absolutely perfect. From this point on, you stride and soar across Mira like a god.

90% of your time in any game is spent simply moving from point A to B. Usually the mechanics to get you there are utterly unremarkable — something you'll typically only notice when something's wrong. But XCX really embraces the lesson taught by the Mario games, and makes the raw act of traversal a consistent delight. Yes, Mira is a gorgeous, intricately-designed open-world that is endlessly fascinating to explore... but what really transforms XCX into a truly great game is simply how gratifying it is to move through it.

To this day, I still regularly boot up my WiiU — literally the only reason I still have it plugged in — and load up Xenoblade X. I don't bother fighting any monsters or talking to any NPCs or completing any quests. I simply fly.

These polls are kinda worthless if you can't be bothered to include every game that releases in a given week. So much shovelware here, yet Front Mission gets forgotten? Yikes.

There's really no way to respond to something like this other than to nod my head vigorously at every sentence.

It's not merely unfortunate that XCX has yet to see a port/remaster/sequel, it's a travesty. Borderline criminal. Especially considering just how freakin' rare good SF games are these days, or even more specifically, good mech games.

Exciting news! Here's hoping this means the chances of a Suikoden V remaster are greater than 0% now! Best game in the series but, good grief, those loading times on PS2 are brutal.

Watch them release it the day after the war ends.

@ChadThundercock69 Oh please, it wasn't that bad.

Though -five- different farming ROGs was a bit much, I'll grant.

Neat.

But TBH I'm more excited for very minor QoL stuff in future updates.

I definitely like the character design, though. Very unique. Though it is vaguely reminiscent of the ARMS stuff.

Can someone explain to me why people go so crazy for this game? I emu,aged it a while back and... found it to be pretty rough.

Huh. Guess the first game must've sold really, really well. Ah well. Here's hoping they manage to integrate the 8 stories better this time around.

(Also, where's that HD-2D Dragon Quest III?)

So, no news of the perpetually-rumored remasters, but we did get a BotW2 release date, logo and title review! And it's less than a year away! Very exciting!

Or, rather, it would be... if it revealed literally anything new about the game itself.

Oof. That much DLC is gonna cost an arm and a leg.

Also, I'm kinda concerned about the gameplay. How's gonna work? That looked like the stylus controls from the 3DS games (no button prompts, just color#) which... yeah, I dunno. I can't see that working well on the Switch. Presumably there'll be button-input as well, but it's kinda weird they didn't show it.

Really not feeling it. Art direction is solid at least, PC character design notwithstanding (hopefully they'll be customizable like in the 3DS games) but everything about the premise/story looks awful. At first I thought it was gonna be a new mobile game or musou (somehow). But... it's a new mainline entry? Really?

Well, maybe they'll surprise me. Fates looked awesome in the trailers, and turned out to be pretty crap, so surely the inverse can happen, too.

@Baker1000 Famitsu doesn't actually review games. They only rate them, with each of the 4 judges providing a very brief explanation for their rating, usually just 1-2 sentences.

Can't wait for more NecroDancer.

BotW, XC3, Splatoon 3, BotW2, they really will work on anything in the world but XCX2, huh?

I remember the exact same same predictions from "reliable" journalists around this time last year.

I'm not sure I'd call the Zelda remakes "endless," considering there's only ever been... lemme count 'em... exactly 1.

But, yeah, remasters can only go so far and backwards compatibility is ideal. But is this really a bone to pick with Nintendo? Their platforms are so wildly different from each other that backwards-compatibility is effectively impossible. Even ignoring the (not insubstantial) issue of media format, a Switch simply cannot play 3DS games (no resistive touch screen) nor WiiU games (no multi-screen functionality--which also affects potential NDS/3DS compatibility).

Take it up with Sony, who could've made the PS4 and PS5 fully backwards compatible with all PS1 and PS2 games simply through software emulation, but chose not to.

Or, I guess, start lobbying Nintendo to abandon their present and historically very-successful hardware design philosophy to focus on making much more conventional consoles instead.

Does this qualify as throwing shade on all 5e Nintendo games that fail to hit 30?

@Jiggies also worth noting that what's ideal and what's adequate is not a constant--it varies from genre to genre. I'd argue that for certain modern action games, 60fps is only adequate--120 being the ideal. Meanwhile turn-based and/or puzzle games, without a lot of complex or quick movement, can be well suited for 30fps — or fewer.

@GuyProsciutto I thought the PS5 was also backwards compatible? That was the only reason I had one in my, "To Buy, Eventually," list.

It's also worth considering that console life-spans are going to (have to) increase to accommodate how much more time it takes simply to develop new games each generation.

The stereoscopic 3D certainly was a great feature in MK7... but it ALSO had a first-person view! That was incredible! It absence is literally the only flaw in MK8 — which is otherwise perfect.

It's really mind-boggling just how many of these games they made.

Would absolutely love to see ports/remasters of the Legacy of Kain games. Probably too much to hope for, sadly.

I hope the new games play more like Arceus. Tried to get into the older ones in 3DS but found the gameplay loop just too dull. Loved Arceus, tho.

@Browny You're not wrong. Definitely check out Suiko2 (and Suiko5, for that matter) sometime. They're regarded as pillars of the genre for very good reason!

Suiko3 is also very good but hasn't aged well. IIRC it was a launch title for the PS2, or very near to it, and very rough around the edges.

PS3 storefront is still up, so there is at least one platform being pro-consumer here in at least one respect. I just bought Grandia III a couple days ago.

And, yeah, it'd be nice to see some 3DS/WiiU sales, but I'm not gonna hold my breath. Most of the games I'm still waiting on (and will probably wind up paying full price for) are either Square-Enix (Dragon Quest VIII!) or 1st party (WiiU virtual console!) and we all know what those two are like.

Is this gonna have the same gameplay as Arceus? EG hunting Pokémon in the wild w/ light stealth/fps mechanics, and seamless battles?

I don't really care about the visuals. They look fine. They're passable for gimmick-DLC meant to bolster NSO subs.

What does bug me is just how poorly-designed (and boring!) these new tracks are. They really highlight how well-executed the original game's tracks were, even the least among them reaching a far higher level of quality than the best (so far) of this new lot. To the point where I genuinely be,I've that buying this new DLC actually makes MK8U a worse game.

Download Play would be nice and all but there are some much more basic features we should probably get first (and honestly should've gotten years ago). An Activity Log, proper folders (or some other way of customizing the initial home menu), themes, etc.

Through the virtual console. Goddamn, I miss the virtual console.

Seems weird to cite XC3 as "lesson learned" when we got so many incredible sidequests in XCX. It's more along the lines of, "lesson forgotten, then half-remembered."

We need(ed) more big eShop sales. Even with the eShop closing, a lot of games I'd be willing to try are a bit of a hard-sell at full price.

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 for me. One of those old classics that I never had the opportunity to play, due to either being prohibitively expensive or simply not having been ported. One of those games that'd been on my 'wishlist' for years.

A bit overpriced for a fairly barebones port, but it's a really fun game and I'm happy to finally have the chance to play it.

I mean, the new stuff looks good, but it a.so looks mostly like stuff that could have been DLC for the first game. Which was also the case for Splat2. For folks who really care about the game as a competitive online shooter — the folks who've been playing Splat2 regularly since it launched — Solat3 doesnt need to justify itself. But for everyone else? I'm not really seeing any compelling reason for anyone to get Splat3 if they've already got Splat2.

Which was also the case for Splat2 in relation to Splat1, so while it's disappointing the content is so marginal, it's also hardly surprising.

Pricey. Anyway, they ever get around to patching the NS port?

@Sonos In my case it's more that I'm interested in a lot of indie games that tend to be in bundles, where it's ultimately cheaper to buy the bundle of 8-12 games than just the one. I do make an effort, when I can, to at least try the other games, which has led to finding some incredible hidden gems I wouldn't have looked at otherwise.

But, yeah, going out of your way to buy games you don't care to play just because you can is potentially pretty unhealthy. I am reminded of all those "collectors" you see on Reddit, especially for platforms like the WiiU or Vita (platforms that simply never had very many decent games, period) showing off shelves of hundreds of game cases, mostly shovelware.

@Sonos I've been accumulating a vast library on Steam for more than a decade, thanks to generous sales and copious bundles. I still only have 800 or so titles.

I can't even imagine hitting 2000 there — let alone on the Switch. More than a mess, I'd say,

Oh, I see. It's a remaster, then.

Hard to get excited by DLC, especially after the sublime Cadence, but I'm eager to see what the sequel's like.

All I want from the DLC is at least one track that's half-as-good as the worst MK8U track, but that seems unlikely.

@YoshiF2 Probably because it's low-res? You don't exactly get a lot of aesthetic decisions when working with 16p resolution.

There's a reason why the "better" looking skins are 128p. Or maybe even higher these days? Haven't looked at Minecraft skins in years.

@Wilforce It certainly had much better visuals. And a clearer narrative. Altogether making it a much better game IMO.

Regardless, I'm excited for whatever's next. NecroDancer 2? If so, I hope the levels/maps/floors are a bit bigger.

I'm pretty psyched for SD Gundam Battle Alliance. Which, based on the demo, will run like a dream.

Splatoon 2 was just, "Splatoon 1 again," so this doesn't really seem very surprising. What IS surprising is that Splat3 is an NS game, not an NS2 game.

Given how much the SP is an afterthought, at best, you'd think Nintendo would want to keep it to one release per hardware cycle, like Mario Kart and all the various Sports games.