KingOhger

This is very worrying news, I hope this deal falls through. Monopolisation is never a good thing and this particular deal has implications for media outside of just video games. Even then, a lot of Sony's dubious decisions as of late don't exactly make me feel optimistic about them being able to effectively manage all of Kadokawa's sub companies and properties.

I haven't had any issues with the game (I am short-sighted and require glasses, granted not that bad touch wood), but this discussion has made me realise how important it is for companies to consider people's eyesight in the future. I remember when that silly little Game Gear Micro came out, M2 did an interview where they specifically mentioned how they tested the device with the ~50 year-old demographic to make sure that it could actually be used. While I'm dubious on the outcome of that, I am a little annoyed that HD wide-screen gaming has kind of ruined text boxes in RPGs like this. If you go back and play the older versions of this game, the amount of screen real estate that the text box takes up is more than sufficient for it to be legible.
I'm playing in Japanese so a nice aspect of this release is that the Switch is HD enough to show Kanji without any graphical limitations and you can even turn on kana on top of Kanji, but I do find myself sitting really close to my Switch sometimes when I play in tabletop mode.

@SpoonySpoons Exact same story here. Even as a teen it felt like, compared to Gen 4 and 5, the postgame was totally stripped down. You literally only got a Mewtwo sitting in a tiny cave, random Legendary Birds roaming around, and one small town with the Friend Safari (which was a little cool, I admit).

XY for me was a disappointment but still gave me hope, as the online was incredible and it gave me hope for the future of the franchise. Though SM came out and it felt like more of the same, in fact a downgrade in terms of the online and performance of the game, and so I dropped the series until SV.

Nope. Part of me would be relieved actually, my spending on new games has slowed down a lot in recent months given my ever-growing backlog, and this no longer playing physical carts would finally free me from the cycle of going and buying new stuff.

good game, I had fun with it, but got no desire to play this DLC. It is rough around the edges and I hope that GF has learnt some valuable lessons from this.

@gojiguy I'm aware of the cab, I just mean does the 3-screen version of Darius II not already exist as a rom that's playable on the Switch through the Darius Cozmic Collection or a standalone Hamster release?
Or are those the twin-screen versions?

Darius II isn't an exclusive though?
Also yeah, Egret II Mini has a lot of these already, and is definitely my favourite way to play because it's such a good little machine.

Anything special about this version of Darius 2 that isn't in the Darius Cosmic Collection or any other Switch release?

@johnedwin I showed a buddy the trailer recently and he got pretty upset when I told him that we got that 2 years ago with no news since lol, I hope Squenix are hard at work on it

I'm kinda relieved honestly. Happy for them to take their time to polish it (if that is indeed the intention here, and not something else...), besides my backlog is so large anyway that I'm not in a mad rush to buy this! 2023 has been a packed year for RPGs anyway lol
Just bought the physical copy of the FF Pixel Remasters anyway (expensive!!) so this will give my wallet a much needed breather

@Mariotag The eye problems (if you mean rows of pixels dying and not your actual eyes) can be fixed by sending the screen ribbon cables in to get a 'solder fix,' there are a few people across the world who specialize in this procedure.
Idk about 'head' problems though, just don't play for too long at a time. VB games have auto-turn off built in in case you get too absorbed

Love the VB, I really wanted to get that VB to PC controller adapter that someone on PlanetVB made too. Need to buy more games for it as well, have had it for 5 years but only have VB Wario Land (which is a brilliant game to be fair, so it justifies keeping the VB lol).

Though I should ideally tackle my backlog more, decided to replay Pokemon Black (after a long time) on a Japanese neon yellow DSi I had lying around - really should use my devices more often!
Otherwise, a bit of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe again, hopefully be able to play a bit more of FF1 on Dawn of Souls and Persona 5 this week too.

Western fans were truly shafted. I picked up DQX Offline on the Switch while I was in Akihabara back in April, but I really hanker for the convenience of a localization so that I can just get stuck into it without fear of things getting 'lost in translation.'

It's ironic too, what made me get serious about learning Japanese in the first place was the fact that DQX and DQXI both seemed like they'd never get English localizations... While Squenix somehow listened to the fans with XI, having X remain 'confined' to Japan is a lingering bummer.

Now if only Zelda could help their birth rate too lol

I'm just hoping their Neo Geo controller becomes available on Amazon UK at some point, need that thing in my life - will very much enhance playing stuff like Blazing Star on my NG Mini!

Nice article, I've always been a sentimental fool when it comes to games so never parted with anything from my childhood or other major stuff (i.e., games people bought for me for one reason or another). I was quite fortunate to live at home for uni, so a big chunk of my meagre maintenance loan went into building my collection. However I did reach a point in 3rd year where I parted with a good chunk of stuff, like a few DMG Game Boys, a Game Boy Micro along with a copy of Pokemon FireRed (regret this a little, but I got another Micro and still have LeafGreen), a really cool custom modded GB Color that I put together, and some bits like my Action Replay carts (which are kinda expensive now) and Pokemon event distribution carts. I really did not control my finances at all at uni LOL

One thing I do really regret is not having a single cardboard box for any of my childhood Game Boy games, and all my DS games' boxes seem to have vanished from my parents' house completely!

But I'm happy with what I've got now. Pretty frugal with my living these days and save a fair bit so fingers crossed I can continue to work through what I've got and perhaps even clear that gargantuan backlog someday!

Ffs… another game to add to the pile! How much will this be priced at? I just got the MM Battle Network Legacy collection and that was fairly steep, hopefully this is cheaper (even slightly would be nice)

@Zimon Shinen truly are incredible devs. Blows my mind that this game looks and plays as good as it does while being like 1GB large, if not smaller

Oh man, I’m glad that more people will play this awesome game, and I hope that it will revive the online a bit too.
I had no interest in getting a Switch at launch but one of my buddies brought his with Fast RMX into college, we all had a lot of fun back in the day sitting around a crowded table playing in tabletop (taking turns with his joycons). I soon got a Switch after that and Fast RMX was the first game I bought. Put so much time into 100%’ing it and the DLC that year was really fun too. It’s a shame, I thought they would keep support it, but regardless this was a perfect launch title and really scratched the F-Zero itch (especially with Hero Mode). Highly recommend!

@BreathingMiit @Mauzuri Lmao these two comments side-by-side made me chuckle. The duality of man!

While I do think recent Pokemon hasn't reached the heights of the first 5 gens, SV were pretty enjoyable games in my opinion and the most I've enjoyed a new game since BW2. I'm excited to read this new manga... Just gotta try to be open to change! Some people are more resistant than others I guess

@Sisilly_G To be honest, purely as a game SV is leaps and bounds better than Sun/Moon or Sword/Shield. It's just a crying shame that an otherwise enjoyable experience is so rough around the edges, with constant graphical quirks, slowdown and even freezing (my game crashed once in 75 hours), and this save-wiping bug being present doesn't help. Arceus wasn't graphically perfect either but it genuinely feels like it was in development for much longer, it was a much more polished experience.

I don't play GO but I feel uncomfortable just knowing that this bug exists, Game Freak need to be patching it NOW, not at the end of April! And yeah it's absolutely scummy to offer DLC when the base game has so many issues. I think once I'm done with the Pokedex, I'll have had my fun and will finally move onto Octopath II and better JRPGs. The DLC doesn't really look like it offers any improvement, just some more padding to get you to spend another 20 or so hours in the game.

@Deady Yeah, demand does though. There is a pretty big market of die-hard Pokemon TCG collectors and the illustrator Pikachu is an exceedingly rare card that a lot of people want. Honestly the TCG is kind of ruined as a collector's hobby now, not only is it a speculators' market and prices has soared on items, but it's also very unlikely that the market will crash anytime soon now unless everyone collectively stops giving a crap. Which is easier said than done I'm afraid

I don't think we need a shiny jingle at all.

Overworld encounters already makes things easier, if anything it just requires a bit more perspicacity now (as well as knowledge of what the shiny variants look like). The 'skill' element of being able to spot shinies now definitely makes it a bit less braindead than simply running around which I actually enjoy.

If anything, I want there to be a shiny jingle when I send my shinies out against wild Pokemon. Currently you only get that when you send out shiny Pokemon in trainer battles.

@pneumaticgnosis Yeah. While it is evident that the games needed a lot more playtesting, I've since found out that the incidences of this happening are statistically incredibly low, and it's also triggered through a very specific action (connecting up to GO) that most people are unlikely to do.

It does not absolve Game Freak or TPCi, but statistically it puts stuff into perspective. I do hope GF drop everything and fix this though - I recall that they were very 'on it' for the Lumiose City glitch in XY, which was also pretty inexcusable too.

I still think Nintendo should be adding in more options for safeguarding saves though, especially since people put a lot of time into these games. I know about the backup saves, but cloud backup should be enabled for these games too. Failing that, I hope Switch Lites will become moddable soon so that I can easily access Checkpoint to back up my save. Don't want to lose these 3 shinies that I've somehow caught lol

@Anti-Matter It's not Nintendo, it's Game Freak and TPCi. If anything Nintendo needs to intervene, I've never heard of ANY first-party Nintendo games on Switch having game-breaking issues like this. I'm honestly surprised Nintendo aren't staging an intervention for Game Freak right now because they just can't keep acting like they're an indie company.

It's not just Pokemon they're messing up, even that Little Town Hero game was received very badly. It sounds like Game Freak are RIDICULOUSLY under-resourced and under-funded.

I picked this up on launch from my local GAME (as I did for the first game too), which sadly closed down last week, so it's a weirdly meaningful final purchase from there for me.
Anyways once I'm done with Pokemon Scarlet, this is on the list immediately. Octopath is my favourite Switch game, sunk about 145 hours into it somehow, so absolutely got my money's worth. From what I've seen this sequel has improved on A LOT of aspects of the original, plus I love the more modern world setting compared to Orsterra, so really excited to get started.

You know what, I would LOVE another Supersonic Warriors game. SSW2 on the DS is probably my go-to fighting game, so much nostalgia for that game (and glad I finally 100%'d it during lockdown).

Seeing these comments does make me kind of sad, and also, this whole situation makes me even sadder. And EXTREMELY annoyed that Game Freak won't allow people to use save their data to the cloud - other (better) Switch JRPGs let you do so, don't see why Pokemon should be any different.

Anyways this is the most I've enjoyed a Pokemon game since BW2 over 10 years ago, it's rough around the edges but there is a competently made (and even engaging) RPG underneath all of the visual roughness and performance-related issues. I was hoping the 1.2.0 patch would fix most of those minor glitches, but it doesn't seem like it. The fact that they STILL have game-breaking glitches in these major releases truly disappoints me, Game Freak should be working to resolve this NOW. Failing that, just let us save our data to the cloud, because I feel really uneasy having my save data tied to the console and not the cartridge anymore. That concerns me less for other games where I can back them up on the cloud too.

65-ish hours in I have only had the game crash once, but in my opinion, that is one crash too many. I would not have complained if they spent an extra year developing this game to release it this winter instead, it certainly would have benefitted from extra refinement (rather than sticking paid DLC onto an already shaky foundation).