mjhopkins81

I always loved Zelda II more than the first game. It felt more engaging to me. It's still the game I feel deserves a remake.

And I enjoyed Castlevania II, as well, primarily because of the music and atmosphere. It WAS super frustrating to play, back in the day, but that's why we had the NES Player's Guide.

I'm a long-time DQ collector (I'm currently lying under a Slime comforter), and this game is...a solid 6. Fun to play, if not repetitive. The loading times, however, are just unacceptable. It's like playing Final Fantasy IV/Chrono Trigger on PSX.

I mean...they have a formula that works, from a sales and marketing perspective. People know what to expect and love it, with the exception of a few harder-core gamers.

The LAST thing we need is for Nintendo to try to get cute and come up with stupid game mechanics that make playing the game complicated for their primary audience: kids.

Just create new tracks based on various Nintendo IP, add new characters from other Nintendo IP, and focus more on making the game accessible for more audiences, rather than focusing on a single audience.

And no more mobile games. Period.

The thing I loved about both the Wii and the Wii U (as well as the 3DS, to some degree) was the Virtual Console.

It gave me the opportunity to pick from what was, at one time, a HUGE catalog of old games to purchase and play without needing to plug in my old consoles, get them up to working order, and buy copies of games that are $75+ (or $500+, like Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom).

I didn't even mind buying the same games on multiple consoles/handhelds for $3.00 - $10.00, because I could play them whenever I wanted and not worry, because I made backups on my memory cards.

When they started re-releasing the old Pokemon games on the 3DS Virtual Console, it was AWESOME to get to play those games again, and feel like it was the first time.

And then, Nintendo decided to go the way of Sony and Microsoft, and sell me an annual subscription to play games that they will stop servicing in a couple of years, but for which I've laid out several hundred dollars in subscription fees to play a MUCH smaller catalog of games.

Oh, and I have to be online to play those games? Great! Now, I get to pay for in-flight Wi-Fi to connect to Nintendo Online so I can play Breath of Fire II or Earthbound on my Switch.

Screw that. It was a real disappointment, and further solidifies my love for the Wii U and 3DS.

@Sisilly_G Or Final Fantasy XIII. Or Final Fantasy VII Remake. Or basically any Square-Enix game.

@JohnnyC I had the exact opposite experience. I never heard it pronounced "Sness" or "Ness" until I watched Alex on these videos. We always pronounced each initial (an initialism rather than an acronym, like SCOTUS, where the letters are designed to be pronounced as a single word).

When I first heard Alex say, "Sness," I had NO idea what he was talking about, until I listened a few times.

@Arcata That is truly impressive. I have to be honest, I didn't even know that the N64 had 120 games (and I'm not being facetious).

I remember getting it my Freshman year of high school and expecting something really amazing (after the tech demo of Final Fantasy that was released for it) and ended up really only liking a handful of games on the system (Mario 64; Ocarina of Time; Ogre Battle 64), and pretty quickly jumped over to the PlayStation to play Final Fantasy VII.

I have been collecting Dragon Quest games and memorabilia since the 1980s. I have DQ-themed bedding, mousepads, wall clocks, mounted puzzles, and both Japanese and English versions of every game and peripheral in the series, including all of the custom consoles (3DS, 3DS LL, 2DS LL, DQ Heroes Metal Slime PS4, both DQ Builders PS4s, the DQ XI Loto PS4, and the Loto Switch).

Needless to say, I am dedicated to the series.

I have never been so thoroughly disgusted with a game in my life.

There are SO many great ways to turn Adventure of Dai into a game—having the player play through each episode (similar to Atelier Ryza or Tales of) and discover the world around them. Meet the characters. CARE about the characters.

Instead, we're presented with 5-10 minutes of stop-motion manga panels with voiceovers telling 1/4 of the story interspersed with uninspired ARPG beat-em-up battles with slightly awkward mechanics, and battlefields that are little more than corridors.

This is one of the most typical moves that S-E makes: turning a beloved franchise and series into a sub-subpar game that should've been mobile hack-and-slash shovelware.

We aren't living in the 80s and 90s, when the cartridge shapes and internal specs were so vastly different, in terms of size and performance, from the previous generation (i.e., NES to SNES to N64). That made backward compatibility incredibly difficult, although that began changing with the Game Boy generation, with original GB games being playable on the GBC and GBA.

We are now in the age of small tech and digital tech. At this point, there's simply no excuse for NOT having backward compatibility.

Oh, no.

Another multiplayer game based on a franchise I love, but would never play because I loathe playing games with other people.

shrugs

I know I'm in the minority, here, but I've always loved SoM more than the third game.

Trials of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 3) just felt overwhelming, and I didn't enjoy the world as much, OR the music. There was a lighthearted quality to SoM that was absent in ToM.

@Tasuki 100% the same. I could replay those games on a loop and never get bored or tired of them.

It's a very dim hope, but I hope for Dragon Quest X Offline.

People contend that it's an "advertisement" for the online version, but really, it's two pretty self-contained games (if you include the V2 expansion). I've easily put over 600 hours into DQX Offline in Japanese, and STILL haven't completed it to 100%.

@KingMike I mean...nobody asked or told you to purchase it.

@Greatluigi They are great Action RPGs. They have really fun crafting and cooking systems that are relatively involved if you want to 100% the game.

Also, First Departure, Second Story, Till the End of Time, and Divine Force have a series of optional characters that you can recruit, with some characters locking out others if you recruit them, and some of them are missable.

Blue Sphere was never officially released outside of Japan (a Game Boy Color followup to Second Story), but you can buy a decent physical fan translation of it on Retro Gamers US.

If you're a big fan of 100%-ing games, you'll need to play each game more than once, and really focus on rare drops.

SUCH a great game!

I was SO excited to put TOTK aside to go back to Dragon Quest X Offline for the v2.0 expansion.

Finally—I'm playing a game where doing things comes with a sense of accomplishment, rather than feeling like I'm just running through a vast, yet largely empty world.

I'm kind of shocked that so many people got on board the FF train with VII.

Not a bad thing, but I thought that IV or VI would've been the first for most people over the age of 30.

Thanks, but no.

@TrashKing01 Sure, trash. I’m literally wearing a rubber shirt in my profile photo while competing in a Mr. Leather contest. Please, tell me all about my “Puritanism.”

The "fanservice" aspect of the Atelier games has always bothered me.

Any time I've ever said something in a comments section about how it's kind of gross and sexist, INEVITABLY, I've gotten hit with, 'Oh, but the games are all about the characters' growth as women and independence!"

...

In many of the Atelier games, the protagonists are portrayed as addle-brained, but well-intentioned idiots who are sexualized by both the male and female characters.

I enjoy the games, but could frankly do without the gratuitous crotch and breast shots.

Dragon Quest IX Liquid Metal Slime theme, for sure.

I've never understood the massive love for this Tales of game. I mean, it's okay—the story is fine; the characters are...fine; the voice acting is meh; the character design is...chibi.

It's an okay game. Certainly not as good, design-wise, as other entries in the series, such as Innocence, Abyss, Vesperia, Graces f, Xillia, and Xillia 2.

But, for some reason, this game gets endless amounts of love.

And that's entirely fine—everyone's entitled to their own opinion. I just never understood the near-universal praise of the game on any of the platforms.

When I was a kid (back in the 80s), I always named game characters after my friends (which was great, because I had probably four friends, so Final Fantasy on the NES made it easy).

That said, I most definitely "changed my name" in classes in the 2nd Grade to "Link," which confused the hell out of both my regular and substitute teachers.

@K1LLEGAL Yeah...they skip XBOX because it's the worst-selling console in Japan—their primary market.

As much as I resented purchasing the same games on multiple consoles via Virtual Console, I LONG for its return.

I've never been a fan of subscription services that require an Internet connection, and one of the good things about VC was that I could purchase the game and play it whenever I wanted without having to screw around with my WiFi settings and connect.

The argument that "everybody has WiFi" basically excludes the fact that millions of households either don't have Internet, WiFi, or speeds capable of supporting online gaming.

steps off of soapbox

I mean, I really feel like the question is, "Did it ever feel 'new'?"

When the Switch came out, it was great, for a handheld device. Not really groundbreaking, aside from the detachable controllers, but in terms of graphics capability, it was fine. Not amazing, but fine.

The UX/UI design was, and has remained, mediocre, at best. It lacked and continues to lack the graphics and non-gaming software capabilities of its competitors. It lacked and still lacks the native storage capacity of other machines. It CERTAINLY lacks the kinds of social and online gaming capacity its competitors enjoy.

But, I don't think it was ever designed to lead the pack in those respects.

It CERTAINLY improved on the Wii U, which was relatively "dated" in terms of graphics capacity and storage capacity, even when it first launched.

All that said, it is absolutely the machine I've used the most, almost entirely because of its portability. I don't have to strain my neck and eyes to try to read my television; I'm not REQUIRED to use motion controls with games (which appeases my laziness); I love the game catalog.

It's in no way a "bad" machine, but nothing about it ever felt particularly "new" or "modern."

So, does it feel old?

Meh.

It's fine.

I love to see:

Phantasia
Destiny
Eternia
Destiny 2
Rebirth
Legendia
Innocence
Hearts

@Pointy59 I thought I would hate it, but it's less "Chibi" than Tales of Symphonia, and more similar to Dragon Quest IX / VII DS, in terms of character design.

@Dragonite89 RIGHT?! I've spent HOURS trying to discern the difference between a normal Flittle and shiny one...because it's a palette switch from pink to green...under their ruffle.

I definitely loved the PLA mechanic with the sound and animation.

I guess my biggest issue is the performance of the game, at least in handheld mode.

We really ARE at the point where the motion of NPCs walking and windmills turning should NOT be jagged. At some point, Game Freak needs to invest in that.

I LOVE the overworld and the transportation. I LOVE the open world sense of things. I love the battle.

I could STILL do with an option to skip conversations manually. Mashing the B-button to progress text is just exhausting.

@Eagly To be fair, it's closest in design to DQs IX and VII. We didn't really get more realistic/proportioned designs until DQ VIII, and XI was a further step.

@EarthboundBenjy So, I wouldn't call them "Chibi," in the way that Tales of Symphonia's characters were Chibi.

They're closer to the sprites used in Dragon Quest IX on the DS and VII on the 3DS. I thought I would dislike them, because I LOATHE Chibi, but I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

I don't mind the normally proportioned characters, when they pop up during the cut scenes (which are all from the Online version), but it's not a game breaker, for me.

I've also put over 200h into it, thus far, so...

I've already put over 60 hours into Dragon Quest X Offline on Switch to play a great game that I can't read. I would love to get that game localized before a bunch of this other stuff.

Dragon Quest X Offline.

I still can't read or speak Japanese, despite playing Japanese games for a decade, now, but I LOVE that I'm finally able to play Dragon Quest X without having to deal with other people.

I would forego autobattle in exchange for "Skip all Conversations."

Download it, now, before it's gone for good.

sighs

To be fair, it was over a year between the JP and US release of Dragon Quest XI.

Umm...aren't those characters basically straight design ripoffs of Final Fantasy Tactics?

@Bunkerneath When I was still playing it, the game would crash at LEAST thrice a day, for me, usually after or during my purchasing of characters/ships.

@K1LLEGAL I mean the "3DS" name wasn't all that confusing. What got confusing was the "New 3DS" and "New 3DS XL".

Going into a games shop and saying, "I'm hearing to buy a new 3DS XL," and the worker having to figure out which 3DS XL model they meant was just stupid.

I can't be the only one who finds those shirt designs largely uninspired and CERTAINLY not worth whatever they're charging.

@nukatha "Modern convenience"

Ugh. Isn't one reality ENOUGH?!

@JayJ Gen X-er, dear.

@JayJ Oh, we certainly did. The CONSOLES were grey/black, but the Trapper Keepers, folders, phones, pencils, shirts, headbands, signs...

I'm pretty certain that Nickelodeon and MTV cornered the market on Neon.

@blindsquarel Just imagine having LIVED through those color schemes...on EVERYTHING.

I find that, prior to GAME refusing to ship to the U.S., I ended up ordering UK/PAL-region Nintendo games specifically because they actually had exclusive pre-order bonuses worth getting—steelbooks, better figures, watches...

Nintendo of America has consistently dropped the ball on physical merchandise, both as part of Club Nintendo and for pre-orders.

No—I DON'T want a pack of f*cking stickers. What the hell am I going to do with another rubber keychain?!

I want a nice steelbook that I can use to display my game; I want special cases. I don't want some piece of trash that's going to get lost or destroyed from basic use.

I really wanted to like this game—bought the full version and the Deluxe Pass.

And then, I played it.

It's amazing that, in 2022, a AAA developer can create such a poor racing game—uninspired tracks; terrible play mechanics; a story that sucks the fun out of the game.

I wasted my money.