Polvasti

@Arawn93 That is true of course, but a lot of the games in this genre and (like you say) even some in this series do give you the choice to play as a female and/or queer character. So I think it's fine to criticise Marvelous for doing a remake/remaster of the game that has some new content, yet not bothering to add content which would take into account a large percentage of farming sim and RPG fans.

@Arawn93 It's not a tradeoff at all to those who prefer bachelors, though. Or those who'd rather just play as a woman with no romance subplots.

@Princess_Lilly I totally agree that playing as a girl is a superior option for those of us who like to play a female character. Just like playing as a boy is superior to those who prefer to play males. Too bad the game doesn't give you a choice.

I'll be skipping this too since you can only play as a male and only have a hetero romance. Too bad they didn't consider the large number of players who'd rather play as a female and/or queer character with this "special" remake.

@RendoFonzarelli You should try Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, a game which came out on the Switch last month and which Nintendo Life gave a (deserved) 9/10 review. It features some deck-building mechanics, but they are pretty light, and it's much more of a fantasy visual novel with some deep, adult themes.

I guess the Xenoblade Chronicles games count more as fantasy than scifi, otherwise you'd think they would be on the list? Nier: Automata's omission is more baffling, since that game is science fiction through and through, and it's easily one of the top 5 games available on the Switch, with an excellently made port to boot.

@duerer There's definitely some shots of Willow and Labyrinth there, as well as Dark Crystal.

I guess the new robotic race is the ones whose emergence they teased in the previous big update and the subsequent expedition? Based on the images, they look quite similar to the robot body skin you got as a reward for finishing the expedition.

Also, let's hope this update doesn't break the Switch version like the previous big one did last spring.

City builders are not my genre really, but I loved all the previous Steamworld games; Dig 2 especially is my all-time favourite metroidvania alongside Hollow Knight. So I guess I'll give this one a try too.

There's nothing wrong with saying "this game is strongly feminist, so take that into account". But your comments aren't simply about giving a well-rounded view of the game: since you equate feminism with sexism and man-bashing, and seem to think groups with way more power in society cannot be criticised any more than groups with less power, it's clear you don't know anything about even the basic ideas of feminism. So your content warning is not at all unbiased, it seems to come from you wanting to bash feminists. Again, it's like going to black metal concert and complaining that the songs were blasphemous: it's kinda pointless to criticise something you don't even understand.

Came here for the stability jokes, was not disappointed.

The game is very decidedly and openly feminist (it has "sisterhood" right there in the title) so complaining about that is like going to black metal concert and complaining that the songs are blasphemous. Some art is just meant to be political.

Also, you can't judge gender politics just by saying "what if the roles were reversed", because men and women are not interchangeable like that. Men as a whole have historically had way more power than women, and in most societies we still do. So men have done way more harm than women simply because we've had (and often still have) more opportunities and resources to do so, and more to gain from behaviour that harms others. That's why men could and should accept critiques of sexism and not automatically label them man-bashing or something.

@FishyS The game seems to be more of a visual novel than deck builder though, if that's what worries you.

Still haven't had the time to fully try this, but based on the trailer and reviews I felt it may be a bit too on the nose on touching all the subjects that've been trendy with fourth wave feminism during recent years... Tho it's not like there are many video games dealing with fourth wave feminist themes to begin with, so a bit too much is still better than nothing at all.

Been waiting for this game ever since I saw the beautiful trailer, nice to see it getting such praise. It was supposed to come out today, but for some reason it's still not available to buy at the eShop, I wonder what's up with that?

Edit: never mind, it is available now, though it wasn't earlier today. An instant day one purchase for me.

@Ryu_Niiyama Yeah, you're right, it is the Archaic Tunic. You wear it for such a short time in the beginning of the game, and there's no need to ever put it back on once you get better gear, so I'd completely forgotten it exists. 😅

That's pretty ugly, the design of the statue is too busy and action movie-ish in a way the game isnt. And Link too looks like he's posing for some action movie, with a weird toga not seen in the game and a "tough guy" facial expression that's not characteristic of him.

@Truegamer79 Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask are available on the Switch if you pay for the NSO expansion pack.

@Arawn93 The Story of Seasons remakes have added queer options to them, so it's not unreasonable to assume that this remake by the same company would do something like that too, especially since Rune Factory is closely related to Story of Seasons. It's a pretty weird for a game of this genre released in 2023 to assume all or even the majority of its players to be straight men. I'd say it's completely fair to criticise Marvelous for not taking that into account, as they have done with their other remakes.

Also, based on the trailer there doesn't seem to be any voiced dialogue in the game, there wouldn't have been any need to do any extra voice work. And they have added some new story content to this remake, so it's not like the plot wasn't updated in any way.

Given that Nintendo Life gave Hades a (deserved) 10/10 score, you'd think Cerberus from that game would be included on the list? He's a rather memorable demon dog, and one of the best things to do in the game is to pet him every time you've died.

Why doesn't Oatchi have a nose? He looks so weird.

This is great news, thanks for including this info. I personally don't need accessibility options, but in this day and age there's no reason why they shouldn't be available to make games more inclusive. Shame on Nintendo for not having some very basic options included in games like TOTK, even though they would've been easy to implement.

That's great, but why aren't they releasing Rainbow Islands on the Switch before its sequel? I haven't played either game since the early 1990s, but I definitely remember Rainbow Islands being the better of the two.

My top 10:

Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Link's Awakening (Switch remake)
Majora's Mask
Metroid Fusion
Snipperclips
Super Mario Bros. 3
Tetris (Game Boy)
Triangle Strategy
Xenoblade Chronicles
Yoshi's Island

I never had a NES as a kid, but a couple of my friends did, and you could also rent a console for the weekend from the local kiosk, so I have fond memories of playing games like Zelda, the first three Super Marios and Mega Men, Ice Climbers, Kid Icarus, Metroid, etc. with my mates. And it's been fun to revisit those childhood games via the NSO after so many years.

I'm old enough to have played the original games on the NES when I was a kid, and having replayed them a few times since then, the gameplay is still very good and the 8-bit graphics still look fine, so I've no need for graphically updated versions of them.

Is there some in-story explanation for why the main character is dressed in a bikini, or is it pure fanservice? I've always been kinda intrigued by the Atelier games, but the cheesecake character art which seems to be common in them is off-putting.

@sanderev According to the trailer, the player character is not the prince. The prince has been kidnapped, and you're playing a warrior who's trying to save him.

@JimNorman This expedition which was supposed to be available on all platforms on June 7th is still not available for Switch today, June 9th. And there's no explanation on what's happened on the official NMS website either. So you might want to update this article to reflect the situation?

It's a bit sad, between this and the common crash issues mentioned in the comments above, it seems Hello Games has dropped the ball when it comes to the Switch version of their game.

@Rudolf What's up with your racist complaints about "Harlem's gangsters" and could a site moderator please delete that bullcrap?

@Eel Yeah, that's another explanation. But in that case too the TotK Ganondorf is not the same character as the Ganondorf from previous games.

@SwagaliciousJohnson There is debate whether Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are in the same continuity as the other Zelda games, even allowing for multiple parallel timelines. In TotK, Ganondorf has been sealed away since the first king of Hyrule was in power, and he's only released during the present day of the game. Since the other games must take place somewhere between the first king's rule and the BotW/TotK era, it's hard to make Ganondorf's appearances in them fit with the fact that he was supposedly sealed away. The easiest explanation is that BotW/TotK take place in a separate universe, so the Ganondorf seen here is not the same character as in the other games.

There actually is an NPC which will set things in motion. If you talk with the giant Bargainer Statue in the central mine before starting this sidequest, it will tell you this: "I am trapped...under the water...behind the stone gate...of the great plateau..." So it leads you where the quest begins.

@Lake999 Clearly you didn't even read the article you're complaining about, since it actually explains why system level remapping isn't as good as the game having a remapping option in itself.

Top 5:

1. Majora's Mask
2. Link's Awakening (Switch version)
3. Tears of the Kingdom
4. A Link to the Past
5. Breath of the Wild

I've seen many people comment how confident and audacious it was to open the game with "Nintendo presents" and then the title on a simple, small white font against a black background... But didn't BotW do the exact same thing in its opening? My reaction to it wasn't amazement rather than familiarity: "Ah, you can tell this is a sequel to Breath of the Wild."

I preordered a physical copy in January, will pick it up from the local video game store on Friday. Some stores here have a midnight sale on the day before, but I have work and need to sleep too, so spending the night queuing doesn't sound appealing to me. It will be enough to get to play it on Friday after work.

@Munchlax Ah, okay, I didn't know that, I thought it was published by Square Enix everywhere.

@Deviant-Dork The article quite clearly states in the introduction that what they mean by "first-party" are games published by Nintendo. Some of the games on the list may have been developed by other studios, some of which are partially or wholly owned by Nintendo, but they were all published by Nintendo, hence they are first-party.

@Munchlax Dragon Quest XI is not a first-party Nintendo game.

@BTB20 On the official Nintendo sales report page, under the sales graphs, it says: "Software sales units include both packaged and downloadable versions of software."

I'm not sure if that could be interpreted that they don't include any downloadable games which didn't also have a packaged release?

@Sisilly_G You can buy an unofficial Wolf Link amiibo card from Amazon which automatically gives you full hearts in BotW regardless of whether you've used it with Twilight Princess.

Edelgard gets my vote too, she's way more interesting and complex as a character born into royalty than anyone on this list.

@Maxz I laughed out loud.

My first Zelda game was the very first one back in 1988, though I guess the Master Sword didn't exist in that one yet, so the answer is A Link to the Past whenever it was that it came out. Couldn't have imagined as a little kid in the eighties that 35 years later I'd still be playing Zelda games and still get just as much joy out of them.

Never heard of this before, but it seems like the sort of game I might enjoy, so thanks for reviewing it. It's also great to see a game which has a non-binary protagonist. Enby human characters are still very rare in games, and even when they appear, they're usually only a minor or supporting character.

@Fizza Rise was released in 2021. That was 2 years ago, not 3.

About the mysterious character with Zelda's earrings: the previous trailer showed some wall paintings of a masked godlike figure and Zelda holding hands in some kind of a ritual... And since the theme of this game seems to be fusion, I think the mystery lady might be a fusion of Zelda and the masked god.

You mention Tulin in the text, but you failed to mention that the trailer also had a couple of shots of teenage Riju swinging some dual Gerudo swords, and she looked awesome! Clearly this game takes place a few years after BotW, since Riju was just a kid in that one.

I'm all for steaming hot Ganon, and I'm already shipping him and Urbosa as Hyrule's new, ripped power couple.