SwitchVogel

Lol can you imagine how salty everyone would be if it was another fire emblem character?

@CactusMan Hard agree on Ni No Kuni II, I absolutely loved that game. Ys IX was a little underwhelming for me, though; it wasn't bad at all, but I think VIII was still the better game.

@CactusMan How's NEO? Saw it's on sale, but I'm not sure if I want to get it yet.

@Seacliff Interesting, this really makes me wonder where he's gonna go with it in the future. Aren't there still five episodes due?

@VoidofLight Fascinating I didn't know this! Do you have a source on that? I'd like to know more.

@FargusPelagius https://trademarks.justia.com/774/44/bayonetta-77444642.html

I just looked into it, and Sega does indeed still hold the trademark. However, given that their name isn't on 2 or 3, I think this is a weird legal area where Sega owns the Bayo IP but doesn't actually have the rights to 2 or 3. So, the answer is that Sega owns Bayonetta as an IP and owns Bayonetta 1, but Nintendo and Platinum Games share ownership of 2 and 3 and Sega is not part of that.

At any rate, if there's ever a falling out between these three companies, don't expect to see these games released ever again 😂

Who actually owns the rights to Bayonetta, though? I know Sega originally did, and I don't think Nintendo bought it from them to make 2 and 3, yet Sega isn't even remotely involved in the production of these games anymore.

@Silly_G They'll probably release a physical version with base game + Sunbreak at some point. No way it could be it's own release tho, as this is basically adding in an entire endgame that you're supposed to play after you've gotten through everything in the base game.

@Zag_Man Bayo 2 is superior in every conceivable way. Lots more color in the art style, no BS quicktime events, combat system feels a little deeper. You still gotta put in the time to 'git gud' and learn how to do things like dodge offset, but I found it to be much better than the first, and I already liked that one a lot.

Calling it now, this is the mythical 3D Kirby game we've been waiting for.

give us an atelier fighting game, you cowards

Finally, I've been waiting months for Ryza to go on sale. Heard a lot of good things about that one

This was that game that was inspired by Stardew Valley, right?

Huh, never would've called that one. Is this the first third party game offered through this?

"The rigours of childhood play" sounds like a post-hardcore punk album.

If it's half the game Blasphemous was, this'll definitely be worth the punt. I know that one launched in a pretty rough state, but man did they pull it together.

Interesting, the battle for bikini bottom remake must've sold really well. I'm glad they're making a new one, though I'll reserve judgement until they show some gameplay.

@SuperCharlie78 Honestly it didn't really jump out to me all that much. That's not to say it's poor or anything, just nothing exceptional to me.

@Crockin I get what you mean on the story, though I found the original kind of hard to follow, too. I just liked AV2 more because I felt the gameplay was a lot tighter than the first one, which was already pretty great.

@rushiosan I'm curious, what did you not like about AV2?

Love the look of this, I'll keep an eye out for it. Oddly makes me think of New Super Lucky's Tale.

@the_beaver The problem for me isn't even strictly that the dialogue is long, but that you aren't given any ways to get around it. I understand that skipping through the story is missing out on a big part of the game, but I think the devs should at least give the option to either tap a button to skip it completely or hold a button down to fire through it way faster. You can speed up the scroll speed a little in the options, but it doesn't seem to make much difference.

I hope the next collab is Resident Evil, and they add a Chris Redfield skin for your Palamute. He'd just run with your hunter up on his shoulders like a little kid, and when he'd sprint he'd go down on all fours.

@chipia This is an older game that released before they pulled out; Namco just ported it to Switch. I mean, it's not like the door is closed forever or anything like that, but I wouldn't hold my breath on any new releases of theirs coming over anymore.

Fun fact everyone: Rayne was the first video game character to feature in Playboy. Yes, really.

Sad that Level 5 is basically done in the west now, I thought this was a massive improvement over the original, and I really liked that one. A proper Ni No Kuni III could've been amazing!

That's just a Nintendo DS with extra steps

Cries in American

This is why I'm glad there's such an active focus on emulation in fan communities. I'm happy to buy re-releases and ports as they come out, but if a company can't be bothered to bring their stuff forward I have no problem downloading the ROMs and playing them on my PC.

The way I see it, old games will always be available one way or another, because there's such a passionate following around games. Given that, companies have the option of either capitalizing on it by offering up their own legitimate re-releases, or losing out on all that money while a modest contingent of the interested audience just handles it themselves.

Or, you could take Nintendo's approach, which is to offer up next to no legitimate ways to access the back catalog while wasting company resources in a hopeless battle to remove ROMs from the internet. I think they'd be a lot more successful if they stopped paying lawyers to C&D ROM sites and instead put that money towards building out a comprehensive base of their legacy content for a reasonable price. Their work with the SNES and NES apps is a decent start, but there's a lot more room to progress there.

@Ralizah Agreed with you there, making this a dense novel like Persona would completely ruin it for me. I just want there to be a little more character development and a more central conflict driving things forward, and this seems like it'll have that.

Out of these, the GBA would be my pick, but the PS2 startup will always be supreme.

It looks like this has a bit more of a story focus than the previous games, definitely the right move. I hope this turns out great, it feels like it's been forever since the last proper entry.

@Heavyarms55 Agreed. I actually like the Switch UI; it's simple and serves its basic purpose well. I'd also raise that they give us the option to disable communication features in the currently opened game, so others can download on the background. It's annoying when I'm waiting for a download, but it won't make any progress because the current game happens to have leaderboard support or something.

I'd be down for another new Crash, though I'm worried they won't do it. Didn't Crash 4 have disappointing sales?

@JoakimZ PLEASE

Woof, I can't believe Tanabe fought for those bosses to be harder. It took me weeks to get past that as a kid.

@moodycat If there's a better game in the genre, I've never experienced it. I know what you mean about being skeptical over a game that gets praised like this, but this is a rare example of a great game that actually does live up to the hype.

@Meteoroid I think the lure of Stardew Valley isn't that it was innovative, but that it so effectively executed the core ideas of the genre. Sure, it copied directly from old Harvest Moon games and even the creator isn't shy about that, but the point is that it took those ideas to their maximum and virtually established itself as the final word in pure farm sims.

I think it's pretty funny. Kinda makes me wish they made a bad gag cover for every Mega Man game going forward, maybe as an alternate on the other side of the packaging.

@Rayquaza2510 Yes, this was reviewed on the newest patch.

@Snatcher If it's the one I'm thinking of, then yes. They play a piano rendition of Reach For The Stars here.

Glad to see they've spun this off as a sub-series, Copen has some cool twists on the main gameplay. Also gives me hope for Gunvolt 3 when it comes out; I'd imagine that one will have you playing as Gunvolt for the whole time, then, rather than sharing the spotlight with Copen.

"Fixed an issue where a Lv. 99 Battle Buddy and their Lv. 99 Monstie revert to Lv. 1 because of a certain condition"

Lol what! Has anyone here had this happen to them? Was it reversible?

Glad to see they're still interested in making these, and that soft confirmation of a new one is reassuring. I know there are some valid critiques of these, but I just see them as what modern Final Fantasy would look like if Square didn't focus so much on mixing that series up with each entry. Sometimes, it's just nice to have a relatively simple plot and an in-depth job system to fool around with, even if it's not really pushing the envelope much.

@Bolt_Strike I could definitely see an argument for Generations, but Unleashed was an unmitigated mess. Without the werehog nonsense it could've been pretty great, but Sonic Team had other ideas.

@StuTwo Definitely agree with you there, but I'd say that most of the games worth playing would be made available right at launch. I guess I want something that isn't viable with the struggle of third party licensing, but I'd just like to see them focus on an app where there could actually be a steady stream of games that people want to play. The way I see this going, they'd release a slew of awesome GB games at first and then quickly be scraping the bottom of the barrel like they have with the last two apps.

Most OG Game Boy games don't hold up today, change my mind.

I'd happily play through a GBA collection, as there were plenty of games there that aged quite well, but I'd admittedly only crack open a GB app for Wario Land maybe three times a year.

@KevinLo9 No, we aren't. I personally asked to do the review a couple weeks ago and got shot down. I'd assume it's because we haven't seen enough interest in it. I think it'd at least justify a mini review, but that's a decision above my pay grade. Maybe if it picks up more steam over the next few months?

I'm of two minds on this. On one hand, I think it's important that we put pressure on devs to deliver a finished (or at least playable) product at launch. On the other, we're not living in the 90's anymore and the fact is that games now grow and evolve well after their launch date.

This reminds me of when I was reviewing Star Renegades last year. Absolutely excellent game and I was loving every second of it, but there was a game-breaking bug a few hours in that halted all progress. Originally, I was going to regretfully give it a 3/10, but the devs managed to get a patch out a couple days ahead of the embargo, which fixed the issue and brought it up to an 8.

Had that patch been another week later, however, that game would've gotten a 3/10 here and that inaccurate, outdated review would likely still be up even though the game is far better than that now. Given that, I think it's in the community's best interests for us to review a version that's more or less what the game is 'supposed' to be, even if that means waiting out a patch like this. I haven't played Baldo so I can't speak at all to its quality, but I'm sure the game will be fixed within a week or two and then we'll have a chance to see what it's really like and score it accordingly.