Oat

I totally agree about the publisher and steam success playing a factor. It's something I noticed myself. It sucks that they've been rejected so many times. It is a bit hypocritical of Nintendo to reject their game for being too mature while simultaneously bringing bayo 1 & 2 to the switch

@Mando44646 you probably wont be able to find a physical copy of fe awakening. It happens with every fire emblem game. Once it's out of print, the prices rise. I've seen some like new pre owned copies floating around $45 physically if you dont mind paying that much. Otherwise I would just get the game off the eshop

Cool that this series is still going
I still need to get around to some of the sequels like super scribblenauts. I do wonder however what 5th cell is up to since they aren't making this game

Reminds me of a sci-fi themed Super Crate Box with some light tower control elements thrown in.

I care more about whether or not the game is actually good than if we get some skimpy costumes. It reminds me of the frankly pathetic hissy fits people were throwing back when Bravely Default & Second along with Xenoblade Chronicles X changed some costumes. The X outrage was even more infantile since the only character who had their outfit changed was Lin (though I will admit removing the breast slider was dumb). It only ever seems to be when fanservice is involved that people seem to light the no buy torches.

I still need to get Hotd overkill haha

@sillygostly I'll play your game. I downloaded the rpg maker player so I'd love to try it out

Pretty eh sales to be honest for most of these games. I own the majority of them physically. The only ones that stand out to me are Hatsune Miku and Professor Layton Azran Legacy. I'll probably get Layton physically even if the cart is kinda expensive. Hatsune Miku is a buy from since that is unexpectedly pricey for a 3ds rhythm game more than 2 years old. The cheapest I could find it was $24.99 on ebay for a loose cart. All the other prices were $45 and up.

@thesilverbrick I definitely agree with you. After calming down a bit from my Kirby Hype I do have to say that this direct was alright. I mean for the First Halfish of 2018 we have

January:??? (I'm betting nothing for this month) besides Celeste on the 25th

Feb: DQ Builders-9th
Bayo 1 & 2 , Fe (eShop)-16th

March: Kirby Star Allies-16th

April: Shantae: Half Genie Hero Ultimate Edition-3rd
Hopefully Mario Tennis Aces and Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition lauch here since they both have Spring releases

May: Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze 4th-
Dark Souls 25th
SF 30th Anniversary

All in all it seems like things will be picking up around May. There are some great titles here but I'm not entirely sure if most of these have the pull power of a Zelda, Mario, or Splatoon game.

I'm still fairly satisfied with the line up but I dont think this is a 20 million systems sold type of line up

Edit: Not all of these games were at the direct. I'm just listing release dates for games that have been previously announced/confirmed

Gonna wait on this due to hearing about how badly NISA F'ed up the localization the first time.

@Shiryu I was about to comment that. Kof XIV came out in 2016 and this game seems to be running on the same engine. I don't understand the logic in making a stripped down version for the Switch when they could just port KOF XIV and everyone would be happy.

@thesilverbrick Ugh I definitely feel you on that price. Like most fighting games will price fighters at around $5-$6 each. Making 2 new fighters w/some support pokemon cost $7.50 a pop is a complete scam imo. In my opinion makes the people complaining about the price of Smash 4 dlc fighters look like a bunch of jokers.

I am BEYOND excited for this!!!! OMFG I LOVE Kirby and cant wait for this game. Artist kirby is giving me a nice throwback to dreamland 3 and 64. In addition you can be mother freakign spidah man with Spider Kirby. Game of da Century right here folks!

I wish I could heart this 50x over. The World Ends with You is one of my favorite rpgs and favorite games of all time. Even though it's a port, the fact that there's new story content will definitely push me to get a Switch this year. #NoBrakesOnTheHypeTrain

I hope that theres's a possibility that they play GBC games. If it's just a GB clone I'll have to pass. The main reason I'd be interested is simply to play one game and that Kirby Tilt'n'Tumble. It really isnt all that great to play on my sp due to the clamshell design of the system. In addition the gbc I have doesn't have a backlight and it's getting rather old w/inconsistent power. Last my gb micro I have doesn't play gb/gbc games so my sp is more or less my only option.

I think Jools is using Kickstarter more as a marketing tool than anything else (understandable seeing as the game sold kinda poorly but I feel that it's a bit scummy nonetheless). It's a personal pass for me. I have no real interest in the game itself or in pledging to kickstart a port of this game simply because it sold poorly.

I'm betting on a selects re release for NA. It always boggled my mind why it took so long for NoA to do thise, especially considering that Albw has been a select in other regions for a while. It's stuff like this that makes me wish Nintendo would announce things like this across all regions uniformly rather than make different regions pay vastly different prices for the same game

It's going to be a hard pass from me. I played Xeodriter on the 3ds and bought it when it was 50% off. It's mediocre at best like a lot of Jools' games. I find Steamworld Dig to be a far better Metroidvania game

I'm just surprised to see that ea and Activision didn't bail out after the first 9 months of the Switch. Regardless I'm glad to see that Nintendo is finally recognizing how important 3rd party support is after stubbornly not pursuing 3rd parties during the wii u era

@XenoShaun I'd say so. For me personally I'd love to see more metroidvania games branch away from slavishly aping Super Metroid. Games like Hollow Knight and Ori stand out to me while games like Axiom Verge and Xeodrifter feel derivative imo

@Bunkerneath I don't think speedrunners don't care about the experience of the game. Most speedrunners play through the game at least once casually to enjoy it as intended. I used to be like you too. I used to hate speedrunners and thought they just didn't care about simply enjoying the game as intended.

It's quite the opposite. It takes someone who loves the game to be able to play it nonstop over and over again trying to uncover everything about how the game works in order to get through it as fast as possible. It wasn't until I started to watch some gdqs that I realized just how much these runners know the game inside and out and how so many of them have a deeper appreciation of how the game is designed due to picking it apart.

@Muddy_4_Ever yeah I feel the same way. In addition I think having a wider variety of life experiences will help to inspire some new creative ideas

Great article. I more or less agree with the entirety of this list.
A few notes: I almost guarantee that the virtual console will be just as bad as it was on the Wii-3ds. I unfortunately don't seem them changing how they release vc (here comes the drip feed for the 4th time). I do think it's nice that they'll be giving users a free retro game with the online subscription but besides that I doubt much will be that different.

Account system PLEASE Nintendo. A real account system in which all your games are tied to your account and can be redownloaded from any Switch is a mandatory at this point. This is so long overdue it's not even funny anymore.

Also the Switch eshop is pretty rough. I was trying to find some interesting Switch eshop titles and there's simply too many of them. Even on Nintendo's own website trying to parse through the sheer number of Switch releases is a nightmare. Also there should be basic features like a cart by now (it amazes me how that's still not a thing on Nintendo eshops).

@Nincompoop Yeah but I'd rather have a story in a zelda game that's more than just an excuse to fight ganon. I expect a simplistic story from most mario games and 2d zelda titles. For me personally I expected more from Botw's story than just a barebones plot. I expect better stories from 3d zelda games, especially when they've delivered on a solid 3d zelda story in the past. For me while playing Botw's story I felt like I was playing the end of a story in which all the interesting things have already happened. I wanted to be playing Hyrule from 100 years ago. In addition the barebones development of all the champions made me hardly care when I freed their souls. I would gladly trade in some of the freedom Botw provides for a better story.

Edit: I'm also very happy to see a good amount of people in the comments that wanted a better story.

That's good. Now if only we can get him to open his eyes to how important having a good story is. Botw story was so mediocre. I have high hopes for the sequel, I just hope they improve the story amongst other things

@Oscarzxn I wouldn't say that no one like it's. It's more that people (myself included) think its merely a good game and not the 10/10 masterpiece everyone claims it is. Speaking for myself while I enjoyed it, there were a lot of significant flaws for me from both a story and gameplay standpoint that prevent it from being my favorite Zelda or even open world game.

Very cool to see that the staff and community choices more or less line up with each other. I do have to vote to disagree about 3ds goty as I thought samus returns was average at best. My vote went to Culdcept Revolt. If I could choose again I would have probably chosen Fire Emblem Echoes (though that season pass nonsense still leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth).

Lastly it's interesting but not surprising to not see Arms in the top 5 of either 2 lists. For me personally ( I know I'll get some flack for this) I would have liked to see Nintendo support this game for a longer amount of time with significant content updates. With dr coyle being the last update, 6 months of support (barring any balance changes they make in the future) is not enough for a fighting game especially considering that games like injustice 2 and even disappointing fighting games like street fighter 5 are still receiving new content almost 2 years on.

It is criminal how underrated and overlooked this game is. I bought it at release and it's great. I just hope that people in the comments right now will also go out and buy this game instead of just lamenting its poor sales.

@SpaceboyScreams I agree with you actually. It would definitely help games stand out more if more effort was made into making each game visually distinct and representative of the game you'll be getting into rather than just adopting an anime style because it's what people are used to. You seem like a very interesting person and I'm glad I'm able to talk about this with someone. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

@shadow-wolf I completely agree with you. I wish Nintendo would care more about the timeline in zelda and just storytelling in their games in general. I basically read these quotes as a pr way of saying "yeah we kinda just made the game and didn't really give a crap about the timeline."

It gets very frustrating to me to see Nintendo not really care all that much about an aspect of the series that fans are very passionate about.

@SpaceboyScreams I'm with you for the most part. I think a large part of it is just down to familiarity. I often ask the same question myself and the best answer I can come up with is that people genuinely love seeing the same things over and over again (think going to a store and always getting the same brand of chips). I get tired of the overzealous hothead youth protagonist mc or the "I'll do anything to protect my friends" type of dialogue but it keeps showing up because people have low standards imo. I think that in the eyes of many, if it's entertaining it's good enough for me. Kinda disappointing but oh well.

@ilikeike im like the opposite. Dungeons are some of my favorite parts of zelda games so I was fairly underwhelmed by the divine beasts. I do agree that in recent years a lot of the dungeons have been too long but I think alttp had good dungeon length.

I understand where they're coming from however I started think they kinda dropped the ball with the divine beasts. They were far too easy. If they had dungeons that approached some of the complexity of a link to the past or even were as enjoyable as botw hyrule castle, I would like the divine beasts a lot more. In addition, if there was somewhat of a linear order, it would have allowed the devs to scale up the complexity of each dungeon.

I know I might get some flack but botws non linear design really hurt dungeons the most. Every dungeon could be the players first dungeon so none of them could be too complex. If the game was slightly more linear in structure then they could design dungeons with the knowledge that the player is capable of facing greater challenges. Linearity is not always a bad thing

@Maxz Huh I didnt know that. Slightly disappointing but understandable I guess. Thanks for letting me know about that

You can just feel the edge from this character.
It's cool that there's more stages, arms, and characters being added but I'd prefer a few more game modes tbh

Meanwhile in NA...

Sucks that this wont be for the 3ds version as well

Looks very good! I'm surprised they actually hit their 2017 release window. Can't wait to play it, though I might wait a bit for reviews since $25 is quite a commitment.

Can I just say that I adore the 3ds! It is my favorite handheld of all time. I'm sad to see this system go but damn did I have a good time with this system. I have almost every game listed with the exception of about 4 titles. I'm glad to see Kid Icarus Uprising get some love finally. It seemingly is left off of every best of 3ds list I've seen.

@Mrrabbitpuncher I know how that kid feels. In 7th grade I had my crimson red gba sp stolen with a bunch of my games. I was at school and someone stole it out of my backpack. What makes me even more frustrated is that it had to be by someone who knew I had it with me that day because no one else even knew I had it. It was incredibly heartbreaking because it was a gift from my mom and was my all time favorite handheld system until the 3ds. I had to buy a replacement and slowly replace each game that was stolen. Some people are just a**holes

Yeah this game seems very interesting mechanically. I've always wanted to see how a smash style game mixed with a traditional fighter would play like. I'm not too big on the character designs ( a bit too furry for me) but everything else looks promising. I like the stage design too. It looks like it has some actual personality unlike brawlout and icons. In addition tbe characters dont look like they're straight up smash bros clones. I'll keep my eye on it.

No need to boo sony, they make some great games
Anyway, welcome to the site

I chose the first option but with a big a** asterisk
I want them to improve a lot of the things that I found lacking in Botw
I want:
-A better story (even with all the memories, including the ones from the dlc, the story felt lackluster)

-Better dungeons (Divine beats were generally underwhelming for me aside from Vah Ruta and Vah Nabooris. Make more dungeons like Hyrule Castle).

-Less but Better Shrines (Some of them were great! Make more shrines like blue flame and less motion control dungeons. I feel like with slightly less shrines, they could focus on making them that much better)

-More enemy variety (self explanatory)

-Increase weapon durability (I don't necessarily want them to get rid of the durability system but I want base durability on weapons to be increased across the board, especially on weaker weapons. it feels so demoralizing to get a seemingly special weapon only to have it break after 3-5 enemies or even less than that)

-Add in a blacksmith too (It is insane that you cannot repair weapons in the slightest. Make it cost a lot to do so just to keep it balanced. I just want to have the option to repair things)

-Have better sidequests

-Let me explore underwater ( There were a lot of times I wanted to dive underwater to see what was there, only to be reminded that I cant.)

-Bring back fishing (This one is just me I suppose but I really missed fishing. I'm not a huge fan of having to swim after fish in order to catch them. Also it makes sense to add that in as there's a fishing village in the game and unless everyone just swims in the ocean all day, it would make sense that people would know how to fish)

-Balance out the armor and cooking system (It gets way too easy to become a walking tank essentially immune to damage by the end of the game. A lot of the recipes are far too good, especially the hearty durians. Also add a cook book to the game)

-Less rain (self explanatory)

I think BotW is an 8/10 at the moment. It's a good foundation but far from a masterpiece. I want to see a sequel in this style but I'm also concerned that they wont change enough for the better after all the high praise they got from this game. (I mean look a splatoon 2 which launched with the inability to change weapons in between games without exiting the lobby. That was an issue from Splatoon 1 that should have never even made it into the sequel).

I'm hopeful so fingers crossed.

Thank you Thomas for your work on this site! You were by far my favorite editor and I wish you the best of luck in life. Good luck at your new job. We'll miss you!

@roadrunner343 Oh I definitely don't hate roguelike elements by default. I definitely agree that hand crafted levels with some rogue like elements is a good combo. I know it's not lazy to use rogue like elements but for me personally I tend to have a problem when it's used as a substitute for handcrafted levels. I feel that unless you set the parameters to allow for really interesting levels, I would prefer that devs take the time to just make handcrafted levels as I often then they result in a much better experience.

@readyletsgo I think rogue elements are a bit overdone nowadays. They were a fresh concept back in 2011-2013/14 but now it's like every game has to have them. I know that it allows for "infinite" variety but I often find that it leads to bland forgettable levels and that it puts a lot more pressure on the core gameplay to be that much more engaging and addictive. Unfortunately the gameplay in a lot of these titles tends to be serviceable to good and that drags the experience down for me since I'm left playing a game with ok gameplay and forgettable levels that tend to be more cheap than fun.

I think the best case is spelunky as each segment of the level is handcrafted, just how they're put together is randomized. In addition there's always a way to the bottom without having to use ropes meaning that there's less frustration and feeling like you got cheated out of a good run due to poor procedural generation.

@Pikachupwnage you spesk the truth. It gets very tiresome when basically every 3ds article turns into switch port begging. If you want the game and can buy the game on a platform you own, then do so. Otherwise people need to shut up

For me Culdcept Revolt is easily my 3ds game of the year. Such a fantastic game that I didn't expect to hook me as much as it did.

I seriously thought this was a prank when I first saw it lol

Man the switch is quickly becoming an indie heaven. It's getting high profile Indies like furi, enter the gungeon, and hollow knight that the wii u only dreamed of