riki_sidekicks

And what's with calling it "Switch's biggest JRPG yet"? More like Switch's biggest game yet!

No way. I want to be surprised.

In our household it gets played in handheld mode if someone else is using the TV (usually for the PS4), and in docked mode if the TV is free.

I was planning to play Super Mario Odyssey but the new plan is to play "refresh Amazon order tracking page."

This also missed the biggest problem with the game: the fact that after 31 years Nintendo still is still stuck on "rescue the princess" as the driving motivation for the so-called "plot."

This is absolutely a Zelda game, and not just because it says "Zelda" on the cover. It's a return to the series roots: the freedom and exploration of the original Legend of Zelda, rather than (yet another) attempt to remake Ocarina of Time.

100% agree that the bosses sucked (as was also true in the original LoZ--one place where going back to the series roots was not such a good idea.)

This is just hideous. A fur vest (what kind of animal-lover wears fur?) over a bikini and f**k-me boots?

They seem to have forgotten to mention the biggest lesson, which is that you can't look at your TV and your tablet at the same time.

If they're just going to put a phone game on Switch then what's the point? No thanks.

Just put XVI on. Though given how long XV's development took it won't be out for several more console generations anyway.

Have they said anything about how long they intend to keep maintaining the game servers? Many games will be nigh-unplayable without online multiplayer. (Even XCX will be a crippled experience with no Reward Tickets.)

Are they going to fix the terrible magic leveling system? It's particularly bad in the second half of the game, when your max magic level is 5-8 but when you get a new elemental it's at level 1 and completely useless. So you have to tediously grind casting the same spell over and over and over and over and over.

Still no sign of support from third-party AAA developers, and a very, very short list of promised first-party offerings that might move sales.

The question isn't so much what's next for Zelda, but what's next for AAA video games. Breath of the Wild is a huge break from past Zelda titles, but there's nothing here that's fundamentally different from what was in the multitude of open world games that came before it. The brilliance of BotW is all in Nintendo's execution of the concept: putting the right density of content in the sprawling map, writing puzzles with many possible solutions based on emergent physics, avoiding the feeling of tedious repetition. How will other companies try to match that?

Of course, one great thing Nintendo could do is get their head out of their a**, ditch the POS "rescue the princess" plot they've been recycling since 1981, and give us a game where Zelda is the main character.

PS4 sold 13.5 million units in its first full year (holiday 2013-October 2014). If Nintendo can come anywhere near that it would be huge.

The big hurdle for Nintendo is getting enough sales to get third-party AAA support. The Wii U had a death spiral, where poor initial sales -> third-parties dropped the console -> less games -> less sales.

Right now the situation for new titles or ports of recent titles from AAA developers is still pretty dismal. EA has announced FIFA 18, which is new but won't be out for a long time. Uibsoft has Just Dance, which is new, and Steep, which is from last year, Activision has Skylanders, which is from last year. Squeenix is technically AAA, and has announced Dragon Quest, but that only sells in Japan. No Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy. And there's not much else from AAA, just indies.

Analysis in point 1 is way off. You are the best, the one everyone turns to to solve all their problems. Nothing ever happens without your intervention. The only way you're different is that you're mute and completely free of any personality.

But the article is right that Mira really is the main character, along with its inhabitants. The beauty of the game is in exploring fantastical landscapes and building up the relationships between the many peoples that come to inhabit NLA. This is actually why I hated Skells, especially Skell flight--finding long winding paths around Mira is fun, but just flying directly to your point kills that.

I didn't like the Wii U second screen at all. The fundamental problem is that you can only look at one screen at once. It was ok on the 3DS because the screens are almost adjacent, but on the Wii U going from one screen to the other was too much of an adjustment. The only case where it was really useful was in hyper-casual games where it was used to give one player hidden information. That's not worth all the costs associated with maintaining a second screen.

I have 20/20 vision and on my 32" TV I strain to read most of the text. It's very frustrating.

I tried playing it on my in-laws' 50" plasma TV. The text is easy for me to read, but still small.

Surprisingly, I also saw a lot more pop-in and texture loading issues on the 50" TV. I guess the Wii U has to work harder to render the same resolution on a larger screen?

@Nico07 Don't buy the disk version of PT if you're in NA, since it has the unpredictable Tower 11 glitch which completely crashes the Wii and requires a hard reset. I would wait to see if they fixed that in the downloadable version.

@TheRavingTimes that is the #1 question. XSeed never figured out what caused the Tower 11 glitch!

Xenoblade Chronicles! Very few North American players have been able to play due to the tiny print run. The New 3DS port requires buying a whole new console.

The Wii version of XC has dropped in price since the port announcement, but it still costs ~US$60 for a used copy on ebay. A Virtual Console version of XC would dramatically expand availability. By contrast, you can get the other two Operation Rainfall games for US$30 new on Amazon (though the VC version of Pandora's Tower will presumably fix the infamous Tower 11 bug).