ramu-chan

I have M2's port of Battle Garegga on the PS4 and it's superb, so I have high hopes for this one. I also hope it'll be the start of a longer collaboration with Cave which will ultimately give us Dodonpachi Saidaioujou, Akai Katana, Muchi Muchi Pork, Ibara, and Pink Sweets.

The Cave back catalogue (for that's all it is now sadly, Cave stopped making Shmups years ago) has been for too long locked away on the Japanese X360.

I've been trying to get into Fire Emblem but the game is such a complete train wreck from a rendering perspective it's proving difficult. The frame rate is a total mess, and the pixlelated, flat out ugly visuals are a huge turn off. They clearly overshot, assumed the Switch could do more than it actually can and it was too late to change. The game simply shouldn't have been released in its current state - it's amateurish to say the least.

@tkgaming

It would presumably have a vastly superior screen, better battery life, and be much smaller.

@Sabrewing
From the videos I've seen it's definitely based on the PSX version, albeit with seriously ugly "high-res" sprites.

I'll stick to playing the fansub of the Saturn original.

Nice. The Saturn port of this costs a fortune to buy now.

It'll be interesting to see how this runs. The PS4 version is 30fps, so the Switch version at 30 is going to need some serious trimming.

In the positive column though the Switch version replaces some of the god awful ultra low budget MIDI music from the PS4 version with orchestral versions.

PC for me. 60fps, mouse control, high-res frame buffer. That said, after Wolf 2, which was such a step backwards from the original I'll hold back for a Steam sale on this one.

I've been playing this for a good few hours now and my word what a technical train wreck. The overall impression is it looks like a PS2 game with higher-res textures and a 900p frame buffer, with incredibly barren, basic, and downright ugly environments. The art direction is just flat out terrible. Don't attempt realism when your hardware/engine aren't up to the task.

And the frame rate. Wow. Atrocious frame pacing, stuttering, freezes, and drops. It's not even alpha level and it's genuinely surprising that Nintendo would let something so clearly unfinished be released.

As for the game, I'm not sold at all on the school concept, but the combat is fine.

I wished they had stuck with chibi type art for the battles. The Switch lacks the grunt to pull off what they're attempting here, leaving it looking extremely sub-par. If they'd kept it more stylised, it could have worked.

Graphically looks like a PSP game running on an emulator. Amusing too how the game a) has no lighting at all, and b) they forgot to model the backs of the pillars in the fourth screenshot.

Good job guys, top marks, bonuses all round.

60fps is the definition of essential in a shooter. I can't imagine even playing a 30fps shooter.

PC for me. When it comes to first person shooters, mouse control makes such a gigantic difference I just can't play them on consoles. Add to that the gigantic graphic downgrades which the Switch version will receive, including halving the frame rate, and I'm not going anywhere near this.

It's interesting that these impossible ports exist on the Switch, but they're not for me.

This is on Game Pass on Xbox and PC for this with the means.

It's a nicely put together Contra Hard Corps homage. It's much, much easier than that game, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as Hard Corps was well.. quite hard.

The only slight ding is the music, which is a pretty forgettable. (much like the music in Contra Hard Corps)

Real shame they didn't use this opportunity to fix the horrible placement of the right stick/face buttons. Having to claw thumb over the stick to reach the face buttons is ergonomically terrible.

Even if you can overlook the enormous graphical downgrades and the low frame rate there is another killer problem with this port - massive input latency.

This port should not have been released in this state. It's grossly unprofessional and shows to be frank, that the dev team simply didn't spend much time and money on it.

This game doesn't run well on the PS4. The Switch port will be... disappointing.

As Nintendo seem to have lost all ability to create anything in 2D, this would be a great fit.

@Anri02 Is called an opinion.

@Rpg-lover Thanks for that. Get out of the wrong side of bed did you today?

I've been playing this on the PS4. It doesn't surprise me that it has bugs, as from a technical standpoint the PS4 version is deeply unimpressive. Not the level of the car crash Switch version, but it's still weak. On a PS4 Pro it's 1080/60 in SDR. I guess there are simply no Pro enhancements at all, either that or the PS4 Amateur version is even worse.

The game itself is a near carbon copy of Symphony of the Night, but with low budget, mostly ugly 3D visuals instead of beautiful 2D. Music is utterly forgettable and generic too. So far for me it's a 6/10 game.

@Starcakes Every 2D Castlevania game ever made (including the DS ones) were 60fps.

30fps is a game killer for anything 2D.

The Switch version is by all accounts an utter disaster, so avoid it at all costs. Unfortunately for Kickstarter backers who chose the Switch version before the scale of its ineptitude became clear, we're stuffed.

I can only imagine what state the (now cancelled) Vita and Wii U versions would have been in.

The original Ouendan was a wonderful little game. Fantastic soundtrack, great art style, really fun game. The sequel really wasn't as good, simply because the soundtrack wasn't as catchy.

As for the Westernised versions... devoid of soul, catchy tunes, and character. A shell of a game.

The Switch has really become the retro gaming fan's system of choice now. So many compilations and re-masters of classic games. They're a perfect fit, as Nintendo's brand new titles usually have the same old school sensibilities.

There is of course a large Metroid shaped hole in the line-up this year, and I'd argue there isn't any one big stand out AAA first party game to replace it either. Fire Emblem looks very weak so far unfortunately with decidedly sub AAA production values. I guess you could kind of count Pokemon, but that isn't first party.

An amazing game to this day, but it's extremely distasteful that Nicalis have stripped the Treasure logo from the box. It's Treasure's game 100%. To steal the credit from one of the greatest devs of all time is totally unacceptable.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, Nintendo has always revised its handhelds.

More power could be either an overclock, made possible by shrinking the APU (and so lowering the heat output), or perhaps a move a newer Tegra chipset. The Switch uses a Tegra X1, so upgrade options would be the X2 (which isn't much quicker), or the Xavier.

The smart money would be on an overclock.

Best game this generation, but this is one hell of a difficult port to pull off. It took CD Projekt a long, long time and countless patches to finally get the PS4 version to run well. To take a game which can only just maintain 30fps on a 1.8tflop system and port it to a system with barely 1/4 of the power at best. Well, it's going to be a challenge.

Rondo makes the Japanese version the only one worth considering. Also, the US version being in that absurdly large case is as comical now as it was then. It was nearly all full of air, because apparently Hudson and NEC thought Americans wouldn't buy something compact.

I used to have a sizeable PCE collection and in all honesty there aren't many truly great games for the system. There are some good shooters, and a few decent platform games, but Rondo aside (which was by far the best 16-bit Castlevania) the Super Famicom and Mega Drive were far better systems.

I though it was going to be a new Banjo game, not just some DLC for a game I don't care about. Shame.

And where was Bayonetta 3? The lack of Metroid Prime 4 was I suppose predictable given the debacle last year.

I'd much sooner have had something original. Breath of Wild was seriously over-rated. I thought it to be an empty, largely lifeless open world with truly terrible music and bland visuals. It isn't even 1/10th of the game Wind Waker is. At the time I had just finished The Witcher 3 and the gulf in quality between those two on every front is staggering.

It looked more Uncharted like from the trailer. Extremely linear, scripted, and forced. Ugly character models too, but at least it was running at 60.

I'd like to see him return to hand drawn 2D games for whatever he does next. The low end 3D in Bloodstained hurts my eyes. There's no craft in it, it feels so generic.

@Gibb I refer you to the early 1990s.

That's why.

Alien Soldier is one of the best games on the MD. It's an absolutely incredible pseudo sequel to Gunstar Heroes, and is technically amazing. It's Treasure at their best.

It's also an incredibly expensive game to acquire now.

Super difficult too. I expect most people won't get past the first mid level boss.

I quite like the GBA style art but every video I've seen of this with it's ugly staccato movement looks terrible. This is a pass from me.

Vita meets the 3DS. Looks pretty nice, and I especially like the dock idea and the symmetrically placed analogue sticks. The offset sticks drive me nuts on the current switch. Having to hold my right thumb in some freakish claw like position to reach the face buttons over the analogue stick is incredibly uncomfortable. It limits my portable gaming to 15 minutes at most before cramp sets in. The joycons are right up there with the Wii Remote and and the N64 pad as Nintendo's worst ever controllers. And to think the same company made the Gamecube pad...

This will be an interesting chart once everyone is on board, until then though, it's basically pointless.

@60frames-please Look at Square's port of Chrono Trigger to Steam and phones. It's beyond terrible. The 4:3 screen of the original has been cropped to 16:9, and all of the graphics have been mutilated beyond recognition with some sort of upscaling filter. It's frankly insulting.

@Aya-chan You are 100% incorrect. The Switch's Tegra GPU varies in speed depending on whether it's docked or not. It maxes out at 0.75 TFlop. The XO is 1.3TFlop. The PS4 is 1.8TFlop. The PS4 Pro is 4.2TFlop. The Xbox One X is 6TFlop.

Add to that the slow CPU (4 core ARM A57 at 1ghz) and that it has only HALF of the system RAM of the XO and PS4, and you have a system which is more of a half way house between the PS3 and the PS4.

The normal trick of dropping a 1080/60 PS4 title to a 720/30 Switch port isn't an option. Moreover this is a game which struggles to maintain 30fps on a PS4. If this is really a thing, it will require some drastic, extreme graphical cutbacks.

Compare the world complexity of The Witcher 3 to Breath of the Wild. That's what they'd have to do to it, and more, as the underlying way the world is built in The Witcher requires a far higher poly count.

@Alucard83 AC3 was developed as a 360/PS3 game. Both of those systems have 512mb of RAM. Far less than the Switch's 4gb.

Frankly you dodge a bullet if you skip this, and not just because of the sloppy Switch porting. Assassin's Creed 3 is the worst in the series by some margin. It's desperately earnest and frankly flat out boring. It's at best a 3/10 game.

@HikaruKitsune They only received western releases in the US. Europe never saw them at all.

Thankfully Limited Run Games have slapped Battle Garegga onto a PS4 blu-ray.

More shooters are always welcome, especially with M2 doing the ports. Hopefully we'll see Dodonpachi Saidaioujou soon, as that's the last real STG Cave ever made and that only ever received a Japan only X360 port.

Incidentally, for anyone interested in M2, watch the fantastic My Life in Gaming doc about them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc5DlOkOcU4

Collection 2 sounds like a no brainer if this one sells well enough.

Vampire's Kiss
Rondo of Blood
Symphony of the Night
Circle of the Moon
Harmony of Dissonance
Aria of Sorrow
Castlevania Rebirth

I'd buy that.

The Cotton series is a real mixed bag. The original arcade game (ported to the X6800, PC Engine, and Neo Geo Pocket) is decent but unremarkable.

There's a Super Famicom sequel called Cotton 100% which is again pretty standard stuff. Then came the ultra rare MegaDrive Panorama Cotton, which is technically impressive and a solid game.

The series then went 32-bit with Cotton 2 and Cotton Boomerang (the latter is a variant of the former). This is in my opinion the best Cotton game by far. The series ended with the pretty weak Dreamcast effort Rainbow Cotton.

If the series is remarkable for one thing, it's that they're all rare and very expensive to buy. As games though, they're mostly not worth playing. Only the Saturn version is a genuinely great game.

Looks like 720p 30fps. PS4 is 1080p 60fps. If you have both platforms, the choice is obvious.

Monster Hunter World for me, followed up with a bit of Shakedown Hawaii and the Castlevania Collection. Maybe I'll squeeze in a little Alien Soldier and Macross Scramble Valkyrie on the side too.

@GravyThief Sadly the Famicom versions aren't in the Western release yet, but with M2 at the controls I have no doubt they'll do a great job with the VRC6.

@Antraxx777

The Famicom version of Castlevania 2 was an FDS game, which provided an extra sound channel over the stock Famicom. Your ears may prefer the NES port, but technically the music was more advanced on the FDS.