Ralizah

@Ulysses I can only imagine how stressful it is trying to consider every factor when launching a new console. Especially when your old one is as successful as Switch is. And, frankly, especially when you no longer have an alternative device to fall back on.

The good thing about the inevitable transition period is that the new software should hopefully all run on the new device, unlike that last batch of 3DS games that launched after the Switch dropped.

@Ulysses Well, I believe the Lite launched in 2019. That wasn't "later in the console's life" to any meaningful degree. I do think they'll probably launch one device at release, though. Nintendo traditionally releases revisions 2 - 3 after that to maintain momentum with its portable consoles.

Anyway, I don't disagree that they'll obviously want to transition people to new hardware. I just question whether they'll have a budget SKU that'll be cheap enough to hit the demographic they're aiming for, in that regard. Even with inflation, $400 isn't really 'cheap handheld range' for most people.

A lot of it really depends on how they approach the new hardware generation in terms of marketing and software compatibility. This is solidly Furukawa's Nintendo now, so I'm curious to see how it differs from their 'concept era' launches.

Nintendo's long-term play will likely be, as with Switch, to have multiple systems per family.

So $399.99 seems like the reasonable price for a next-gen hybrid Nintendo console. Possibly with a somewhat more expensive premium model as well.

I could see them opting against a Switch 2 Lite and selling the original Switch as their budget/small child SKU instead.

@johnedwin Base PS5 hasn't really come down in price. If anything, prices went up for the digital model and Dualsense controllers. Considering the Pro is likely to be a high-margin, low-volume sorta product, I wouldn't expect any deals on it.

I mean, it's not like Nintendo's own games haven't drawn from other sources as well.

Sony looked to Mario for inspiration and created one of the best platformers of the generation. I don't see the issue.

This is something a lot of young professionals raised on social media need to internalize, especially. Your words are out there forever, and you never know what bridges that your burned in the past will suddenly turn up in your path. Dunking on that annoying coworker or boss isn't going to be worth it when you encounter them down the road and you life is more complicated as a result.

More generally, the better you treat people in life, the more you maximize your odds of beneficial outcomes in all areas. Whether it's someone vouching for you on something unrelated, or someone whose life you improved doing things to help others, which might also go around to benefit you indirectly.

Even from a purely selfish, egoistic perspective, there's every reason to be a nice person most of the time. Sometimes you have to let people have it, of course, but you want to pick those battles carefully.

@Lizuka I liked Book of Shadows. It's not a classic like BC:RF's many versions, but it maintained much of the atmosphere of that game.

Shame how Blood Drive turned out.

@Summer235 It's really all about the use of sound. Excellent voice acting. Fantastic implementation of 3D audio. And the disparity between the gruesome stuff you're reading about and hearing vs what's actually on screen forces your brain to conjure up vastly more horrifying images than even the worst CGs.

It doesn't hurt that it's a super solid example of a traditional ghost story, either.

@anoyonmus I'm very skeptical about this upcoming Corpse Party game (I guess Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient was abandoned?), but always open to being surprised.

Corpse Party should be on this list. Still an incredible game, even if the series as a whole is... less so.

@SalvorHardin I found it weird too that TotK is a direct sequel where the entire world apparently suffers from a severe case of amnesia. Why even make a direct sequel if you're going to do that? Just make a reboot like Super Mario Galaxy 2, in that case.

Although I'd argue TotK is a much stronger (narrative) experience when you treat it like a soft reboot as opposed to a proper story sequel.

Nintendo should never have perpetuated the timeline nonsense to begin with in any official capacity. Throw some references in there for the really obsessed fans to speculate about, sure, but most normal people are going to recognize the majority of entries are unique experiences that are utilizing similar themes and characters in different ways.

I actually just started playing Aria of Sorrow for the first time today, so I'm curious to see what makes people love it so much. It's... alright so far. Definitely better than Circle of the Moon.

Nice to see Order of Ecclesia getting love, but Rondo is too low.

@anoyonmus Looks pretty darn solid!

Every new trailer makes the game look that much better. This could really just blow away almost every other 2D Zelda to date if they do the dungeons right.

Swordfighter form is nice, too. As cool as the echo system is, it's nice to know there's a little bit of traditional Zelda combat in there.

@Tasuki By that logic, people who own a PS5 wouldn't have any reason to complain if the recent collections of Castlevania games on Nintendo portables had skipped that system, right?

@Ulysses LOL

Glad to be of service.

It's so nice finally having these games on modern devices! Definitely some of the shiniest gems in the DS library. Particularly Order of Ecclesia, which is only under Rondo of Blood for me.

@Haruki_NLI Dual Strike and Days of Ruin. There were two DS-era games.

People keep calling this a visual novel, but it sounds more like an old-school adventure game. Which would make sense, because that's what the original FDC games were as well.

@Uncle_Franklin You realize this wasn't released instead of new games in those series, right? It's not like there's a "Star Fox development fund" piggy bank that Nintendo smashed open because they wanted to make this instead.

WHY WASN'T THIS A SEGMENT IN THE ENGLISH DIRECT?!

Not a huge fan of the original, but it is very cool that they'll finally be on consoles internationally in a form. This remake looks so much more dynamic and fun than the rather ancient, clunky original game.

@IceClimbers Oh wow! I guess I was wrong.

Already played this on PS4, but might just grab the Switch port to 'send a message,' so to speak.

Actually looks really good, from the footage. But yeah, like others 5 has made me hesitant to get too enthusiastic. We'll see how this turns out.

@Buizel SEGA loves Nintendo, but RGG Studio... not so much, considering how biased against Nintendo the director is.

@Elbow Maybe not $60, but enough that it'll price out most people who know you can get the game everywhere else for practically nothing on sale.

Calling it: Sega execs have been looking at Switch sales numbers and bugging the developer to port Yakuza for ages now, so they're gonna sent out some full-priced port to die on the market in order to justify continuing to ignore Nintendo next generation when they release hardware that'll likely be able to run all the Yakuza games.

I might buy this just for the Power Stone games. Had a lot of fun with those on Dreamcast.

I'm not buying in until the remakes go on sale and I play those.

As others have said, $400 is probably the sweet spot. Even with killer exclusives at launch, $500 is risky, especially given how comparatively cheap that would make the original Switch, which has a gigantic library to draw from at this point.

@LikelySatan It was such a breath of fresh air for the series. Multiple characters that play differently, a rad futuristic/cyberpunk settings, multiple story routes, deeply challenging bosses. So, so good.

Genesis missed out on RPGs compared to SNES, but it usually faired better in other regards, especially with directly comparable games. Hard Corps > Alien Wars, Bloodlines > SCIV, Rocket Knight Adventures > Sparkster, Shadowrun and Aladdin had preferable Genesis versions, and so on. And the Genesis was home to so many cool, weird games. Toejam & Earl is still an all-time favorite in this family.

But yeah, the lack of support from Square-Enix definitely hurt a bit. I didn't play the SNES Final Fantasies until I owned a GBA, since I didn't own an SNES when I was a kid.

@LikelySatan I'm here for the Hard Corps love. Absolutely my favorite 16 bit Contra!

@Mrkittyhead Awesome! I've watched the original film many times over the years, but I showed it to my boyfriend for the first time last night as well.

Lots of Alien love going around recently with the new movie coming out.

What'd you think of it?

@OldManHermit Yeah, that lines up with what I've learned from clips/reviews/etc. Not sure how Michael Myers went from the elegance of The Shape (practically death personified and who seemingly melts into the shadows of the world the moment your eyes aren't on him) to some generic white trash serial killer with issues at home.

I think there's a place for Zombie's type of slasher film, but it does a disservice to the original concept.

I need to watch Halloween 3 again. Haven't seen it since I was a kid. I think they could have gotten away with it if SotW had been Halloween 2, but once you make two movies with the same world and concept, that's what people are going to be expecting going forward.

IMO A Nightmare on Elm Street faired way better. The first three movies are all excellent, at least (as is New Nightmare).

@LikelySatan The original is still one of the scariest movies ever made. Pity it wasn't simply left alone.

If I had to introduce someone to the sequels as well, I'd probably just show them Halloween II and H20. As a trilogy of films, those work pretty well (way better than the embarrassing David Gordon Green trilogy, and whatever the heck the Thorn trilogy was going for).

I've still yet to see the Rob Zombie remake duology, lol.

lol

The Evil Dead one looks fine, but is it too much to ask that a side-scrolling Halloween game has at least a little bit of atmosphere to it, like the Splatterhouse games?

Then again, Halloween is the same franchise that saw its famously immortal lead get defeated by Busta Rhymes, so what do I know?

Really talented voice actress. Genuinely a bit gutted to hear this.

@-wc- Thanks, hon. 👍

If it means anything, you're not forced to listen to the new arrangements. You can switch to the classic music in the settings menu. At least, that's the case for FFV, which I just recently got on Steam, but it'd be weird if the same wasn't true for the other games.

There's no such toggle for the pixel art, but it's not unusual for ports and remasters from previous gens to re-do classic pixel art anyway (FF1&2 remakes on GBA and FFIV on PSP come to mind immediately).

I'm assuming you'd prefer to have ports of the original console releases?

@-wc- STRONGLY disagree. The orchestral soundtracks are gorgeous and, for me, are the biggest reason to buy these games again.

It's a middle-ground between simple ROM dumps and expensive HD-2D remakes that would take forever to come out. They may not have the additional content from previous handheld ports, but otherwise I consider them the best way to experience these classics.

Pass at that price. Really should've been cheaper prior to delisting.

Good, balanced review, although I'm left wondering how touch controls are somehow less precise than motion controls. You're LITERALLY touching the screen where you need to manipulate things, right?

I LOVE World of Goo, but they're sending it out to die at that price. $20 would have been much more reasonable.

@Yalloo "Ah well, different points of view I guess"

Yup!

Don't get me wrong. TotK IS a good game, and it does certain things much better than in BotW. I just found I preferred BotW's more focused game design and the way it integrates storytelling, game progression, and mechanics.

I'm glad TotK was such a magical experience for you!

@SpaceboyScreams "I doubt many people are buying a Switch this late in its lifespan just for the 7 year old classics."

LITERALLY three of the top five best-selling games on Switch are from 2017, friend. One is from 2018. Animal Crossing is the only one that was even released in the 2020s.

@Eggolor Vivian was re-written in the original English release, which made her a plainly cis woman instead of an otokonoko. The new translation is more faithful to the character's original concept.

@Yoshi3 The issue for me is that the focus was shifted away from exploration and adventure, and toward creativity and resource gathering. It's still incredibly cool exploring new environments, sky islands, the depths, etc., but I would have enjoyed the game way more if they'd spent five years putting in better dungeons and a more involved story rather than simply adding in an incredibly fiddly new mechanic (Ultrahand) that required a ton of dev time to get right and ended up dominating the game.

I'm a big believer in liberating Zelda from its past design trappings, but a lot of what worked in BotW ONLY works in BotW. The story being minimal, out of order, and relegated mostly to the past, for example, works brilliantly with the setup, but it simply makes things confusing and unsatisfying in TotK when they tried to tell a more traditional story.

Honestly, it reminds me of Fire Emblem Fates, which ended up retreading a lot of the same ground as Awakening, but in a less satisfying and narratively cohesive manner.

@CupidStunt I have some issues with TotK, but honestly, it's probably the hardest game in the series I've played since Zelda II. Plenty of challenging enemies and environments. Surprised to see you think it's easy.

Looks like The Origami King will probably remain the top-selling Paper Mario game, at least for now. Love to see it. <3

TotK is a story sequel to BotW. If I'm new to the Switch ecosystem, or at least to this particular duology, I'm buying BotW first.

TotK is $10 more expensive than BotW in the U.S. at well, which is probably also a factor.

That said, I also think BotW is a much better game overall, both in terms of its initial impact and its design focus.

I could maybe see Super Mario Wonder sneaking in to last place down the road if it sells at a faster pace than NSMBUD, but otherwise I think this top ten is pretty well and thoroughly baked in at this point, with Mario Kart 8 the indisputable leader forevermore.

@SpaceboyScreams "Insubstantial DLCs" don't sell 20 million copies at $69.99 MSRP lol. Sony has to slash the price on even its biggest properties to hit those numbers.

It's a direct story sequel to BotW, so of course it's not selling as well. If I'm new to the Switch, I'd buy BotW first as well.

As someone who has been in a bit of a love and hate relationship with the series over the years, I never expected Xenoblade 3 to blow me away like it did. What a rock-solid masterpiece! A technical marvel on Switch that addressed nearly every issue with the previous games, while elevating the series' best aspects to new heights of excellence.

Absolutely my favorite game on Switch. Probably my favorite JRPG. And a top three video game overall.

Cannot wait to see what Monolith Soft does next.

@Macnemo79 A few things.

• Baldur's Gate 3 was the dark horse competitor from a much less prominent developer.
• It's at least as highly critically acclaimed as TotK was
• TotK was an iterative sequel, so plenty of people already felt a little fatigue regarding the formula.
• TotK's storytelling was... not great, the dungeons weren't really any better than in BotW, and as cool as Ultrahand is from a tech/dev perspective, it's very fiddly and turns the game into more of a resource management sim/physics sandbox. Its predecessor had these elements in the background, making the open world feel more real and engaging, but it became almost the exclusive focus of TotK.
• BG3 brought prestige and mainstream attention to a formerly extremely niche game genre.

I enjoyed both quite a bit. Twist my arm, though, and I'd have to give the nod to 3H for its more impactful storytelling and superb cast.

The Steam Deck OLED has fully satisfied my desire for a more powerful Switch, so they'll have to sell me on it with exclusive games alone.

Not currently planning on buying the successor, as such, but Nintendo has a gift for publishing unmissable exclusives, so I'm sure I'll get it before too long.

Nobody working for a large American corporate entity is ever safe, frankly. They will exploit you ruthlessly and lay you off without warning, because your life and ability to provide for your family means absolutely nothing to them.

@RupeeClock Stuff like this was bound to happen once IGN bought them.

I won't even front: the Mario + Rabbids games are my favorite Mario RPGs on the system. I hope this isn't the end of his collaboration with Nintendo.