Takoda

The poll is open until the 1st of March... on the 1st of April?

@Minfinity It’s interesting to see how discourse around a game changes through time. Like Sonic Colors was a similar case: loved upon release, then the fans started ragging on it, and now it feels like it’s back to being well-liked. Odd stuff, but interesting.

Totk failed in so many aspects that matter to me (and not to discredit it, it succeeded in others that just weren’t that impactful), while Botw managed to beat it even in those areas I thought Totk would have the easiest time surpassing what came before. I don’t feel like Botw did it’s story exceptionally well, for example, and somehow Totk managed to tell a less impactful, less interesting narrative. As a sequel, it didn’t capitalise on using the same world again much at all, with characters also feeling like shells of their former selves if they did get reused. In that way, it’s a failure in my eyes… a failure I played for about 100 hours so yeah, still a great game but in large and small ways, Botw still beats Totk for me, even if I fully expected the opposite to be true.

Two versions is already too much, and purely used for the money nowadays. (And arguably already just for the money back in the day if you ask me) So yeah, just stop, make one version, look how good legends was and that didn't need two versions, did it? It's unnecessary, there's no good reason to keep it, just give us the choice to choose between the legendary pokémon in-game.

Fusion easily beat it for me. Many times I felt on edge just from the music and setting in Fusion, right from the start, but with super I felt a lot more chilled out most of the time, haha. Not that it did atmosphere badly, not at all, but just like Prime, not really a super standout when compared to a lot of Fusion. Frankly even just when it comes to gameplay Super didn’t leave me as impressed as popular opinion had me think I would. Same with Prime. Good games, but not that exceptional anymore.

I do however think that it comes in second because Dread and Zero mission for example had good moments but felt less atmospheric, while Samus returns and the old school ones just failed to suck me in at all.

Haha, I guess I did ‘go all out’, was a very cool idea. I like the chrono trigger the best of the four I did, but was honestly amazed to see the other contributions, especially the contra one and the surfing gif.

Now everybody shall know I’m actually hiding behind Takoda on this site and don’t go by Chris everywhere nooooo-

Played it, and I think this is the perfect game to recommend to my girlfriend. I’ll probably play it somewhere along the line, but wow, absolutely not worth 60 for me. This is decidedly the kind of game that doesn’t really hit any high notes, but it seems mindless enough that I’ll have some fun playing it long after release date.

@LadyCharlie In a comment section that is rife with assumptions, your comment was really nice to see. I’m in my last year of studying psychology and still baffling to see how some think on these matters, but a clear explanation, especially from somebody who’s actually experienced it first hand, is always valuable and learns a lot. Heck, I’ve studied five years but I’ve still got tons to learn, and tons of stuff that is unique to each person. So wanted to sincerely thank you, even if the effort might admittedly be wasted on those not willing to listen.

I really have to wonder how people can enjoy this show's Sonic, besides the fight scenes which go from okay to genuinely great sometimes in season 2. There's just too much of Sonic being annoying or heroically stupid for me to root for the guy, and all the other characters are... barely even characters, except for nine.

... and here I am, watching season 3 anyway because I already watched the other two, might as well finish it. At least it seems they learned a bit with each season on how to make the show cooler, but can't imagine this iteration of Sonic inciting any emotion besides annoyance.

Could not handle how annoying Sonic was in this so I’m steering clear of it.

@-wc-

It’s more of a me complaint than a general complaint, a lot of arcadey games work with that mindset, like tetris. xD Just not a mindset I personally understand/enjoy, but that’s fine.

Suika game is the kind of game where I understand the appeal having played it now… but you can’t really get me to go ‘one more game’ when there is literally no reward in it besides a higher score. Even roguelikes handle repetition better than that at least. But hey, if you’re still having fun with it, more power to ya.

It just needs an actual interesting story and not this memory stuff that only really worked in BOTW. I won’t mind if they completely remove the vehicle making too from the next game. The openess is great but they are far from having found a decent balance between freedom in gameplay and impactful story segments or character stories.

@dartmonkey
Of course I read the entire interview and then skip over that right at the end. xD Fair enough, thank you!

So here we have an interview but not a review on the game itself yet… well, hopefully NL has a review in the works, that would be nice to know with the recent batman port getting me in a cautious mood.

Thank goodness. Time for something new, yeah, with a narrative that hopefully brings something interesting to the table instead of physics galore.

I’ve realised that every dragon quest game is one that will be highly overrated in review scores due to it’s legacy, so it’ll probably review amazingly and then be just okay in practice. Dragon quest music, dragon quest monster designs, they both just completely miss the mark for this to work out I think, but the voice acting was surprisingly amazing in the demo. Might give the demo another go sometime but I’m in no rush.

No offence of course, but I’d prefer someone else.

Good thing I thought hollow knight was just great, and that I couldn't care less about when silksong releases or what it turns out like. I'll play it and see for myself when it's finally there, not holding out for it anyway. I'm not awaiting it, and that's probably for the best.

I am going to press a big 'X to Doubt' on that 'best story all year'. Of course, not a hit against the review or reviewer, but with a game like this, feels like it's best to go in with low expectations. It feels like it might be the best story for some specific people but colour me intrigued regardless, I can always appreciate good writing.

I don’t have enough energy to be invested negatively or positively in this when I have nothing to base my opinion on, so I’ll wait and see for a trailer to pop up. Don’t see why this wouldn’t work out but also don’t see it being a masterpiece… not that I consider Zelda a ‘sure-fire win’ for a movie in animation either.

23/25, because I thought one was a skin and not the original, and one I narrowed it down to two and guessed the wrong one. Welp, still good, I put my best foot forward.

@-wc-

Honestly a good question, arcade and rogue like might have similar appeal when you think about it. But the same thing goes for me: I do not like the repetition of it all. Difficulty is fine when it comes with progression, but the progression in rogues often feels unrewarding because you’ll be doing the same thing you were doing ten hours ago, just hopefully better and in some games on progressively harder difficulties. Without a story to pull me along or anything to give me a reason to play besides just wanting to beat something because then I can say I did… eh, I dunno. Just doesn’t give me much satisfaction if it takes so long plus it’s the same thing over and over with ‘constantly changing level design’ that doesn’t feel all that different. Same thing goes with arcade: if it’s just to get a high score, I’m out.

I think a big part of it might be that intentional level design and difficulty that ramps up along with you making progression just feels way more satisfying than beating one random generation just to try the same thing again with a different load-out or higher difficulty. It’s just the repetition of it that grows stale super fast.

Played the original, still held up perfectly and I ain’t playing it again looking largely the same in terms of experience. That game held up remarkably well for how old it is, so I feel safe just skipping this, enough other stuff coming out.

In the 3D space Sonic brings something so unlike Mario that it’d be hard to even compare the two.
In platformers they’re kind of similar but Sonic’s emphasis on speed has those games designed completely differently and with a more challenging core than Mario’s.
Sonic Frontiers was a pretty good showing of what Sonic brings that Mario doesn’t. Sonic gets me hyped up (at least the super sonic sections in Frontiers hit highs Mario never reached in that regard) and Mario never really goes there, instead being more happy and jolly. Sonic actually has something to say, no matter how dumb it gets, and Mario just kind of passes through and afterwards there’s nothing more to think about. Mario is definitely a gameplay first (and gameplay only most of the time) kind of franchise, while Sonic has more stories to tell alongside said gameplay. Nothing wrong with that, and classic sonic has a bit more of a mix of goofy and cool that’s a bit closer to Mario’s vibe, but when Sonic goes beyond Mario in quality it’d still be something wildly different that might not have the same wide appeal even at its best. Mario has all the spin-offs that used to bring a different vibe but it’s all come closer together lately.

Just feels like when Sonic surpasses Mario it’ll still be so different from each other that only the question of quality assurance will be cleared up. Sonic games just seem naturally more divisive, and personally that also makes him more interesting to talk about. I mean, I love me some Mario but it doesn’t elicit much emotion nor food for conversation, nor do I have any connection to the characters past Luigi. Just different experiences.

@Octorok385 Yyyep, Got introduced through millennium girl and have bought every new entry since. Finding the time to play them is another matter but no dungeon crawler hits quite the same highs as EO for me.

Not really a fan of anything dragon quest because the ones I did try all just failed to bring anything interesting to the table… but I do feel like I need to go back and give them a proper try again. That music just really sucks the grandeur out of any of it.

One of my biggest questions as I played the game, and it comes down to a non-answer of ‘just forget about it’. Then don’t make it a direct sequel, might’ve made exploring the world more interesting to boot if you weren’t going to do anything with the fact it’s a direct sequel besides gameplay. What a letdown.

A good character, just not a terribly imposing villain because of how bad TOTK’s story is when it comes to immersion and player agency. Some showing instead of just telling for the stakes could’ve already done a whole lot of good. Well, besides the fact it ain’t that well-written with how strongly the trailers pushed the story part but oh well.

My goodness this dlc is such a step down from the main game, really putting full focus on the jank when you make it frustratingly difficult instead of satisfyingly challenging.

I didn't need FOMO to ruin Totk for me, it was my fear of spoilers that pushed me to immediately jump on the game along with hype, and the game just fell short of expectations, especially on the story and exploration department. Once you get over the 'wow, two entire extra maps??' you start to realise how samey a lot of the parts of that map are, alongside characters that got the life sucked out of them. I enjoyed playing it, but I'd never call it a masterpiece.

Not that I don't get the sentiment for FOMO ruining stuff. When Arcane came out and nobody could shut up about how good it is, all it makes me want to do is not watch it and wait until there's less of a giant mass of people pushing you to either love it or 'you just don't get it'.

@Mauzuri That and it takes ages even offline, you’d think it’d go a little faster but nope. You do kind of need to go online to do any of the harder raids and those are a slog too.

@9-Volt He can’t exactly review the game as it will be later, and not mentioning them in the negatives would make it a useless review. You might not be a fan of it, but regardless, these negatives are present at release and need to be mentioned to actually inform anyone of the quality of the port at launch. Patches later on can fix things but shouldn’t give you a better score if you don’t deliver at launch.

If only raids were actually fun to play.

Didn’t expect to see two people bringing up the Dutch version, since I grew up with that and only relatively recently found out about the english VAs. All I can say is that surprisingly, they’re quite comparable in quality, wonder how they’ll handle the new characters in Dutch now.

I have high hopes, but we’ll see whether it actually clicks with me. This one has too much hype behind it for me to take the glowing reviews seriously so close to release, kind of like Totk before it, though that’s decidedly a different can of worms. I’ll try it on game pass and if it works for me, might give it a go on switch (or just keep going on game pass if it feels right there, some games just really feel better on switch.) Hoping that it sticks the landing for me personally, but very glad at least that it seems plenty of people will give it their time and love. It definitely looks like it deserves it.

Never played jet set radio or craving for that ‘era’ of games so no nostalgia can bring me to buy it for that price, and well, don’t even know if I’d like it at all. I’ll just wait, there’s plenty of more interesting stuff releasing at the moment so that I can hold off on this.

I was going to buy it, then saw it was 40 euros. Dang, I thought it’d be more like half that price, and as someone who hasn’t played jet set radio I don’t even know what this game would be going for… plus the aesthetic and music not being entirely my thing either, definitely waiting for a review and sale.

Didn’t feel the need to complete it, and I’ll just kind of finish all the shrines as my mood fancies another go at it, but I’ve moved on to other games. I did finish it, story and all, got most of the roots and shrines, and with 120 hours or so on the clock I definitely got my money’s worth. It’d be hard to call it a bad game, but I’d say it’s a big heap of missed potential and I feel more fulfilled with the experiences I’ve had with other games since.

The first one about overload in TOTK definitely was felt... but then once I got most of what there was to find in the game it just kind of all fell into place and became less of a 'oh god there's so much to do!' and more of a 'what do I really want to do?' or 'this again?' thing. At first it was an overload and then kind of dull, if still fun as a mindless play session. I very much preferred the wilderness and nature of BOTW compared to TOTK's landscape ruined by fallen ruins that don't have anything to interact with on them most of the time, so just the overall feel and look now, plus the fact it's the same world, kind of killed the spirit of exploration when there are changes, but nothing is drastic enough for me, haha.
Funny how TOTK is without a doubt the better game, but BOTW still comes out on top as a more complete and satisfying experience to me.

Either way, should maybe send one of my own lil letters for next time!

I mean, they’re not exactly comparable games anyway, but I wouldn’t be mad if Totk’s alleged Goty throne gets overtaken. There’s certainly more fresh, ambitious games out there in my experience when you consider the whole package.

@Commandervide0
I dunno, people will always asks ‘what does it play like?’ Two comparisons that feel fitting are hardly ‘lazy writing’ when the review isn’t made up of two sentences or anything. There’s plenty of stuff here that isn’t just comparison. Nobody gets anywhere with ‘your writing is lazy, write better’ anyway. I’d love to hear your alternative if you had one in mind.

@Commandervide0 If the comparison is fitting, the writing is just fine. There’s a higher chance of people having played Mario than anything else on this very nintendo-focused site. You can disagree with it, but from a writing perspective it does what it’s supposed to do if the comparison is fitting.

I admittedly haven’t played this game and I struggle to even tell what the coin-collecting games from Mario were exactly besides just… collecting the most coins, I guess? But with the fact they literally use super monkey ball in highlights here, feels like you chose the wrong article to point out they only use nintendo first party comparisons with a sega comparison right there…

I found out that when people say ‘Quake is one of the best games ever’, what they actually mean is ‘In terms of shooters, in this kind of ‘boom shooter’, quake is pretty great’. I do not like boom shooters. I did not think quake was a great game, I would struggle to call it ‘good’ even, but that is because I am not really into these kinds of shooters to begin with. So, when people tell me Quake 2 is a great game, I’ll happily pass until I’m going braindead one day, it’s on sale for 4 euros or something like Quake 1 and try it anyway only to reaffirm it isn’t for me most likely.

Anyway, hope that for those who do love it, they get to enjoy it all over again.

@Commandervide0 If you mean Super Monkey Ball, that’s Sega, not nintendo.
If you mean the reference to Mario coin-collecting stuff, well, I assume it’s a comparison more so in concept and not in gameplay to give readers an idea what it’s like. Either way, pretty harmless this time.

Not saying they don’t often reference the first party nintendo stuff, just an odd review to choose to point it out on.

Gravity circuit wins and it wasn’t even close, at least for me.

Famicom looks more appealing and no nostalgia here to make me think otherwise so yeh, easy win.

@Quarbit Would be nice if they focus on transitioning to better jobs before they put people on the street and have AI take over their job that kept them fed, but I think reality isn’t quite that sweet, is it?

Have to wonder what the ‘better’ alternative is for artists too who have a passion for what they make but the money machine won’t care if AI just does it faster. Magic those new and better jobs out to the people being replaced first, then we’ll talk about how purely awesome these AI lay-offs are.

Have to say I am also into Purah’s TOTK look but… oof, she doesn’t look appealing in this art to me. The fanart makes her look better than anything found in the actual game actually haha. Only one that kind of interested me where the zelda and ganondorf ones.

Them delaying products so that the quality is assured but giving us an actual update on them like this feels like it should be something that is commended for their transparency and dedication to quality. I’m a Sonic fan, so I know how bad pushing games out gets.