@Link-Hero The issue isn't solved by having full-throated Japanese voices coming out of the pixels instead. All voice acting is a bad fit for this presentation style. The characters' faces are barely on screen, so there's no recognizable features or emotions to match the performances.
I've played plenty of voiced games, I realize the localizations have lower budgets and direction quality. That said, I enjoyed the English cast of Fire Emblem: Three Houses recently. That's a game that has every speaking character's face on screen TWICE, both on their 3D model and in their 2D portrait, both of which with changing expressions. This recent run of Square-Enix retro games has bizarrely refused to even use character portraits in gameplay. That's a feature that comes standard in visual novels, because it just works.
They're not trying to make these games look like CD-i or early Playstation games, which had even lower voiceover budgets than today. They're specifically evoking a platform that had no room for voices on the sound chip, but still told great stories. They told SUCH good stories that Square-Enix was reluctant to include voiceover long after they left Nintendo consoles, up until FFX and Dragon Quest XI.
No other visual medium asks actors to give dramatic life to characters at a 16x24 resolution. I don't think that's ever worked. Give them portraits like a visual novel, or keep them silent like a SNES game.
I wish Square would stop putting full-throated voice acting over pixel art characters. It's a complete anachronism and it never lands, especially after localization gets a hold of it.
@AlexanderDaniels I agree, I think the Point Sensor is easier to use than this. But it would be simple to buff the duration, damage, range, or ink cost on this later if it's performing poorly.
I saw a commenter on here recently trying to argue that merging the handheld/console divisions hasn't produced a steadier flow of releases. Ridiculous. The Switch is getting around 8 1st party titles a year in year 5, go look at the WiiU and 3DS release schedules and tell me the pace hasn't increased. Sure we could hope for more like 10-12 a year, but I'd also factor in some increased complexity, some sub-studios developing for consoles for the 1st time (ILCA and Pokemon BDSP), pandemic delays, and a war starting recently (Advance Wars remake).
Though I will say I miss the smaller, more experimental games the 3DS would get at the $40 USD price point. WarioWare is the only game to approach that legacy so far.
I wonder what he's alluding to with "we will also provide services that also use Nintendo Accounts and other IP outside of gaming software".
Could just be the same service as NSO launching on the Switch 2. What I'm hoping for is a unified storefront to avoid the 3DS/WiiU debacle. But it sounds like he's not even talking about videogames.
Very sad state of affairs. If there's one upside to this, it's that the real Fire Emblem games have gotten more tasteful after Fates, like they exiled all the horniness to the waifu gatcha money printer.
It's not only the cars for me, it's also the missing arches on the jump before them, which would have provided a reason to actually steer your glider to avoid them.
This isn't a technical problem, it's a poor design choice. Between Coconut Mall and the missing turns on Sky Garden, it's like they're trying to make some tracks as frictionless as possible. That's boring. Auto-steering already exists if a track is too difficult.
Yeah, is there any good way for a westerner to play eBaseball, or a reason why it's never gotten an english release? Is it really geared towards NPB? The games look super charming and simulation sports games are a drag.
If nothing else, it makes you appreciate game productions where everyone involved appeared to be on the same page at the end. Many people have their hands in games and may have totally different goals from one another.
Here's something that would make sense for the player: you exchange money for a game. Then you own the game. The End
Gamers can correctly recognize NFTs for what they are because we've seen it all before: glorified microtransactions, now with artificial scarcity. And on top of that crypto is threatening to make PCs unaffordable for the rest of all time. Great
Yes you could just not shoot at it, but forcing your opponents to not shoot in a specific area is very strong. I'm also very interested to see how this works against other specials. It might basically cancel out an opponent's crab mech or inkzooka.
The part of this report that most caught my eye was the latest updates to the emulator being from 2020. Two full years ago?? If this was something intended to be released, then where is it? If there's a more current version, why was this one leaked?
This sure doesn't sound like an imminent release to me. It sounds more like vaporware. Maybe even leaked by someone disgruntled that all their work was for nothing.
I guess people don't grasp the mountains of signage and packaging retail chains like this order, ship, and throw away every month. Not to mention fully functional product. And at the office supply store I worked at, we did literally zero recycling. These Kirby bollards are a drop in the ocean to them.
From the sounds of it, this was another mobile experiment by Nintendo to see if they could make the gacha RPG formula less exploitative of its players, and still be successful. And of course they couldn't. The formula is rotten to its core, as is the market for it.
As for people wondering if it could make it to Switch in some form, I wouldn't hold my breath. The acquisitional part of a mobile game - the randomized gacha - is half the fun. The daily rewards and timed promotions keep players coming back. You remove those, and there's not much meat left on the bone.
I do think the characters and art style are appealing so it would be nice if they're seen again, beyond just cameos. Granblue has its 2nd spinoff console game in development, which was initially linked to PlatinumGames. But without a huge playerbase, doing something similar for Dragalia would be risky.
I try to be open-minded about different gameplay styles, but I really think there's not much salvageable about mobile gacha games. Whenever I try one and my screen is filled up with 8 different timed promotions and 12 different resource types, I just want to throw my phone in the ocean. It's the opposite of good game design. I think the main reason people give them the time of day is for convenience, because their phone is already on them at all times.
I've been advocating for Whispy Woods in Smash Bros ever since Ridley made it in. He's easily one of the most-seen and iconic bosses in all of videogames.
In the west we put "small businesses" up on a pedestal so this is an uncomfortable topic, but much of the worst employee treatment I've experienced or heard of has been at small businesses or studios. Makes sense if you think about it - if a petty tyrant is in charge of one, they basically have zero accountability. No HR department, no one from corporate who has to read all their negative employee feedback, etc.
The games industry combines having teams of not that many people in the grand scheme of things, with being a creative field, which already tend to have low employee leverage. So it's not surprising at all whenever a story like this comes out.
I fully expect Google to do something similar as they run out of new things to sell to advertisers. Revenue can only go up, up forever! Infinite growth!
I don't follow these guys closely but it's a weird contrast here with the best Street Fighter players in the world who are predominantly Japanese, like Daigo Umehara and Tokido, who are almost universally respected by fans, called "gods", and who Sony sponsors countless tournaments for because it's obviously fantastic advertising for them. Ditto for other series and stars like SonicFox and GO1.
Meanwhile you get this comment section making the best Smash Bros players on the planet out to be a bunch of attention-starved streamers and little else. Like yeah, they've spent their lives becoming the best in the world at a competition that millions of people watch and are familiar with, that does free advertising for Nintendo. If all I had to show for that was precarious twitch donations I'd be on edge too.
Probably something in video. He's been directing all the Smash Bros trailers and cinematics himself, and he's written before about watching shows and movies at 1.5x speed while he's on the treadmill, like a nut.
I wish Nintendo did any kind of widescreen support for all its legacy content on the Switch. Black bars on the side of the screen are bad enough, but the Switch Online UI elements you can't turn off are even worse.
If you compare Arceus to a typical Pokemon game, it's content-poor. No gyms, almost no trainer battles, a decimated battle system, no multiplayer. It needed the repeated, action-based catching to be fun.
There is usually no reason to catch 20 or even 5 of a Pokemon, unless you are grinding for something really specific. If you proposed that mechanic to a Pokemon fan in 2019 they might even say it sounds like busywork.
One thing I liked about Arceus is it not actually forcing you to stealth headshot Pokemon over and over for research tasks - you could also usually get their dex entry just by battling with them a lot. That's a playstyle freedom that arguably won't be in Scarlet/Violet. But they'll have plenty of content in place of those research goals, trust me.
"unlockable side missions which see you take part in a host of minigames based around your various copy abilities"
YEAAAAAA if this anything like the Challenge Stages for each ability in Return to Dream Land, this is absolutely my jam. Those were such a highlight of that game.
This is such an embarrassing time for the gaming industry. Imagine if early personal computers had mice that drifted all over the place. Or if the Famicom had a faulty d-pad.
This is THE way you interact with these platforms. How they could sell this out for cheaper/smaller components is beyond me. Nintendo, Sony, Valve, have all lost the plot.
Good riddance if they are indeed scrapping the catching pokemon outside of battle. Pokemon were meant to at least square up with you before fighting on your team the rest of the game, NOT get domed by a metal rock from 12ft behind them.
Nobody should need to scoop up 30 field pokemon in under a minute like they're Team Rocket just to have a good time with this game. But I can already hear the reviews complaining that there's too much RPG battling in this RPG.
I could also point to some Square titles that I'd say have better pixel art, but it's subjective. The larger point is it's an art style that still had so much to offer when the industry basically abandoned it after the GBA.
Not only is it a viable artistic choice, but there's clearly still a huge market for games with this style, as runaway successes like Shovel Knight, Stardew Valley and Undertale have shown.
Telling how he doesn't call them the "Xbox generation". Of course they should all buy and play America's Army: Proving Grounds available on Xbox360 and PC
You're telling me an anime character has another form that looks a little different? This is unheard of!!!
Shame on GoodSmileCompany for producing this plastic spoiler and posting spoilery pictures of it all over the internet. This is even worse than their figma Lucina from Fire Emblem: Awakening. The existence of Lucina is also a spoiler.
@Strictlystyles I also hate the modern "action RPG" and find they're usually just rubbish action games with some RPG elements sprinkled on top. I recoil at any suggestion that the turn-based battles should be scrapped so the main games can be Pokken Tournament Lite.
But what I take away from this article is much of that audience might be pleased with just getting to run around in the turn based battles. That's it. That's all this author apparently wanted in the battle system, is cosmetically running around. This also worked for Dragon Quest 11, so maybe Pokemon can just stick with that.
Unironically I think modern 3D games should still utilize 2D assets more. BotW and this game do it a little bit, where if certain important objects are beyond draw distance, they'll have a flat sprite that gets loaded in 3D when you're closer. They should do that with everything. Objects swapping between 2D and 3D is way less distracting to me than pop-in.
This game and BotW have both been called "barren" by their fanbases and people freak out about the number of trees. Part of it is if you live in a place with trees, they're everywhere. These wild settings should have towering pine forests. That's too many objects to render? Idgaf, slap a 2D tree line in there. It's what games have always done. It works. The representation is more important than the realism.
I didn't like the latest 3 gens as much, but I can speak to them a little. Mega Evos changed the stats of pokemon but also gave them new abilities, some being exclusive and too powerful to be on a pokemon normally. For example Mega Kangaskhan mobilized its baby to make all its attacks hit twice (the 2nd hit at reduced damage). That was as OP as it sounds, even competitively.
Z-Moves similarly pushed how strong single attacks could be, for example Max Evoboost raising all your stats by 2 stages. There was an element of decision making because you might have multiple Mega or Z-Move eligible pokemon on your team, but could only trigger them once per battle, and they coexisted in Gen 7. In single player you might have a Gengar and a Gardevoir and have to decide which Mega is better for a matchup, or when to pop another mon's Z-move. Also the Mega stones and Z-stones took up item slots, so there was an opportunity cost there. The consensus with players is Megas were the more useful of the 2 because they stayed in Mega form the whole battle, whereas a Z-Move could miss or the pokemon that got its buffs could be forced out.
Dynamax could be seen as a middle ground between those, it's like a Mega Evo that only lasts 3 turns, with attacks that have Z-Move effects. All these were really centralizing in competitive play, but I will say Sword/Shield at least featured Dynamax in all the gym battles too. By the time you fight Leon and his Gigantamax Charizard, you've had plenty of exposure to it and will have a strategy of how to respond... even if that's just Dynamaxing the turn after he does. It puts you in the mindset of what you'd do against another player.
Finally, I think the experiments with battle size are interesting. X/Y had 1v5 "horde" battles that got panned because, well, you had to watch 5 pokemon attack, there was generally slow game speed, and maybe some performance issues on 3DS. They felt tedious. Sun/Moon replaced gym battles with "totem" battles where the boss pokemon could summon a helper, making it 1v2. I thought that had a lot of potential, although it felt like the correct play was always to ignore the helper and focus-fire the totem so it wouldn't get off free attacks. And the 4v1 "raids" in Sword/Shield are unique for being a Pokemon co-op mode. I didn't play them much but I have friends who spent the majority of their playtime doing raids. Any of those modes could improve the single player with a few tweaks, even if they're not 4v12 Final Fantasy fights like BloodNinja wants.
Double battles have become the official format of Pokemon's VGC because of how fast and dynamic they are compared to single battles, and how many attacks/strategies are designed with doubles in mind. I like them in single player too, they mix things up and let you see your pokemon complement each other in surprising ways. Or they're good for story beats where you team up with a rival, like with Dawn/Lucas. Ruby/Sapphire had a gym leader double battle with Tate&Liza, I wish there were more like that.
Gen 4: The physical/special split. This was sorely needed because previously, moves used the physical or special stats based purely on what Type they were. A move like Fire Punch should intuitively work on a physical pokemon with strong arms, but nope, it was a special attack before. Pokemon like Flareon or Feraligatr would have high attack stats but not use them well because oops, Fire and Water were special types only. Moves became physical or special on a case-by-case basis in Gen 4, which allowed a lot of Pokemon to finally use attacks of their own type well, which is how the game always felt like it should play.
Gen 5 arguably didn't add a major mechanic besides experimenting with Triple and "rotation" battles. But I consider the EXP overhaul really important to game feel. It rewarded pokemon much more for defeating higher leveled opponents, and much less for defeating lower levels. I think all RPGs should work like this, because it naturally prevents overleveling and keeps your party at similar levels to each other.
Gen 5 is fondly remembered mostly for other reasons. They had a more story-driven approach, where the game didn't end with you battling the Elite 4 and champion, but rather having the antagonist's plot climax at that point and open a different endgame area. They had a full set of 151+ brand new pokemon instead of bringing back old ones; this hasn't been done since. And B2/W2 are the only numbered sequels in the series, which put the whole region forward in time and expanded it with new areas and a new starting point. Anyway some Legends Arceus reviews have called it the best game in the series since Gen 5, which is the most encouraging thing I could hear about it, haha.
(cont)
@Kiwi_Unlimited OK, well as I see it the first 4 gens all introduced mechanics I'd consider indispensable:
(Sorry to NintendoLife for this wall of text, but this user asked and there's no DMs)
Gen 2: Held items and breeding. Held items are a big source of optionality in Pokemon because they have all sorts of effects, and don't make you spend a turn using them (if they're consumable), or they alter your pokemon in some other way while held. They were introduced with berries which were simple healing, but even some berries have more specific uses like healing a status effect you think you're going to get, or reducing damage of a certain type. So if you're heading into a boss fight you know will hit your best pokemon with a type they're weak to, or give you a certain status condition, you could pick a held item to counteract that. There are even some with negative effects, and ways to swap your item with your opponent to burden them. Competitive teams all use different held items, but I think some are pretty intuitive for single player too. For example, giving Air Balloon to your electric type so they dodge ground attacks, or Rocky Helmet to a more defensive mon so they can do some passive damage.
As for breeding, there are players who play Pokemon games just for the breeding mechanic, trying to make shinies or perfect pokemon. I don't do that myself, but it's fun to see what egg moves a pokemon learns. Those are moves they're not "supposed" to have but can get them if one parent is a certain species.
Also weather effects started in Gen II, the Special stat was split into 2 for attack and defense, 2 new types were added, some type interactions changed, and probably more I'm forgetting. It really overhauled the game.
Gen 3: Abilities and double battles. Abilities help differentiate pokemon from each other and give them different utilities. You might have a formerly weak Pokemon get an entry ability that summons weather or something, and become instantly more useful. There's a parallel to abilities in a lot of other RPGs, like Fire Emblem characters all having personal skills now, or TCGs having cards with static effects. There are some Pokemon that don't even make sense without their abilities, like Shedinja and Slaking. It's extra stupid that Legends Arceus removed abilities but still gave Regigigas the mechanical equivalent of Slow Start, its hindering ability. Just give all Pokemon their abilities!
(cont below, character limit)
@Kiwi_Unlimited I could make a similar list of things that have drastically changed from entry to entry, and you could call them "minor changes", and we would just argue in circles.
A common complaint in the Pokemon fandom is actually that GameFreak isn't making games enough like the old games, because the difficulty has been so lowered, and popular features like following Pokemon (HGSS) and the reworked exp formula of B&W will show up in one game and be pointlessly abandoned in the next. Even Mega evolutions, which were pretty centralizing in multiplayer battles, were hoped by many to be brought back in Sword and Shield DLC or the Diamond and Pearl remakes, because they added a lot to gameplay.
My biggest worry with Legends Arceus is the battle system will lack complexity for removing layers like held items and abilities, introduced in gens 2 and 3 respectively, that helped differentiate pokemon from each other and opened up many new strategies.
There are some Pokemon games I can play over and over, and others I never want to go back to. That doesn't sound like the same game for 26 years to me. You might as well say 2D Marios have been the same for 40 years because he always runs to the right and jumps on things.
@BloodNinja Pokemon Black and White introduced 3-on-3 battles in 2010.
Every generation of Pokemon games has innovated on the gameplay for better or worse. The changes in the most recent 3 gens (Mega Evolutions, Pokemon Amie and its friendship effects, horde battles, Z moves, removing the gym leader boss fights, Dynamaxing, and a "raid" system to name a few) have all gotten a mixed reception.
That will lead some people to call the series stale. It's not that the gameplay isn't being updated, it's not being updated in the ways people want. But it's absolutely untrue that it's been stagnant for 20 years. A Gen 5 fan trying Gen 1 games would probably find them slow and mechanically shallow.
Pretty thoughtful take from Miyamoto, especially about how there's no consistency in where people get stuck. It's tough to design a hint system that works for all possible players.
Online guides might be a necessary evil for some puzzle games. Even though they take you out of the experience and the online environment for them keeps getting worse and worse with all the ads, link trees and fandom.com wikis.
It maybe looks a little sillier with humanoid pokemon since we'd be particularly sensitive to the height of those relative to our trainer. And I'm guessing a lot of these screenshots are of the 1 of a kind "alpha" pokemon.
Maybe I'd prefer it to skew a little closer to their default sizes, but the variety is definitely needed in this game. It's not like they have different IVs or abilities in gameplay to differentiate them.
Look at all the nice character portraits in this trailer that aren't used in gameplay at all! Can't wait for full, melodramatic voice acting to come out of 16bit-style map sprites for 50 hours
While I've always gone to bat for fan games, this crap is just so tasteless. The fact is there's actual, playable Pokemon fangames all over the internet that don't get taken down. It's not hard to see the difference between this video and those.
I'll echo that compared to most Poke-clones, this looks like it has a lot of charm and care put into it, with actually nice sprite work and animations. And seemingly it avoids Nintendo-Hire-This-Man-isms like open world or mmorpg mechanics, or an overly edgy story, and instead is more faithful to the games that inspired it.
I'll keep an eye out for some independent reviews when it comes out, since mainstream channels don't tend to give these games much attention.
Comments 544
Re: Live A Live Remake Stream Unleashes Four New Trailers And Gameplay Footage
@Link-Hero The issue isn't solved by having full-throated Japanese voices coming out of the pixels instead. All voice acting is a bad fit for this presentation style. The characters' faces are barely on screen, so there's no recognizable features or emotions to match the performances.
I've played plenty of voiced games, I realize the localizations have lower budgets and direction quality. That said, I enjoyed the English cast of Fire Emblem: Three Houses recently. That's a game that has every speaking character's face on screen TWICE, both on their 3D model and in their 2D portrait, both of which with changing expressions. This recent run of Square-Enix retro games has bizarrely refused to even use character portraits in gameplay. That's a feature that comes standard in visual novels, because it just works.
They're not trying to make these games look like CD-i or early Playstation games, which had even lower voiceover budgets than today. They're specifically evoking a platform that had no room for voices on the sound chip, but still told great stories. They told SUCH good stories that Square-Enix was reluctant to include voiceover long after they left Nintendo consoles, up until FFX and Dragon Quest XI.
No other visual medium asks actors to give dramatic life to characters at a 16x24 resolution. I don't think that's ever worked. Give them portraits like a visual novel, or keep them silent like a SNES game.
Re: Live A Live Remake Stream Unleashes Four New Trailers And Gameplay Footage
I wish Square would stop putting full-throated voice acting over pixel art characters. It's a complete anachronism and it never lands, especially after localization gets a hold of it.
Re: You Can Play Mario Kart 64 In Glorious HD Thanks To This Fan-Made Texture Pack
Beautiful HD visuals in those pixelated twitter videos.
Re: Splatoon 3's Newest Sub-Weapon Is Called The 'Angle Shooter'
@AlexanderDaniels I agree, I think the Point Sensor is easier to use than this. But it would be simple to buff the duration, damage, range, or ink cost on this later if it's performing poorly.
Re: Talking Point: In An Age Of Endless Delays, Nintendo's First-Party Flow Is Extraordinary
I saw a commenter on here recently trying to argue that merging the handheld/console divisions hasn't produced a steadier flow of releases. Ridiculous. The Switch is getting around 8 1st party titles a year in year 5, go look at the WiiU and 3DS release schedules and tell me the pace hasn't increased. Sure we could hope for more like 10-12 a year, but I'd also factor in some increased complexity, some sub-studios developing for consoles for the 1st time (ILCA and Pokemon BDSP), pandemic delays, and a war starting recently (Advance Wars remake).
Though I will say I miss the smaller, more experimental games the 3DS would get at the $40 USD price point. WarioWare is the only game to approach that legacy so far.
Re: Hear The Blue Lions Roar In New Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Trailer
They are thirst trapping so hard with these design updates. Dedue getting a fresh lineup on his beard is hilarious
Re: Random: You Can Now Play As A Squirrel In Nintendo Switch Sports
They done got furries in muh sports game
Re: Lawsuit Brought Against Game Grading Firm, WATA, Alleging Market Manipulation
If WATA wanted to manipulate a market and do money laundering for a few rich sellers, they should have just gotten into NFTs
Re: Nintendo Says It Wants To Avoid A Repeat Of Wii U With Switch's Successor
I wonder what he's alluding to with "we will also provide services that also use Nintendo Accounts and other IP outside of gaming software".
Could just be the same service as NSO launching on the Switch 2. What I'm hoping for is a unified storefront to avoid the 3DS/WiiU debacle. But it sounds like he's not even talking about videogames.
Re: Nintendo Close To Hitting $1.8 Billion In Revenue From Mobile Games
Very sad state of affairs. If there's one upside to this, it's that the real Fire Emblem games have gotten more tasteful after Fates, like they exiled all the horniness to the waifu gatcha money printer.
Re: Random: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Players Really Want Nintendo To "Fix" Coconut Mall
It's not only the cars for me, it's also the missing arches on the jump before them, which would have provided a reason to actually steer your glider to avoid them.
This isn't a technical problem, it's a poor design choice. Between Coconut Mall and the missing turns on Sky Garden, it's like they're trying to make some tracks as frictionless as possible. That's boring. Auto-steering already exists if a track is too difficult.
Re: Japanese Charts: eBaseball Powerful Pro 2022 Is A Home Run As Kirby Slips To Third
Yeah, is there any good way for a westerner to play eBaseball, or a reason why it's never gotten an english release? Is it really geared towards NPB? The games look super charming and simulation sports games are a drag.
Re: Yuji Naka Was Removed As Balan Wonderworld Director, Filed Lawsuit Against Square Enix
If nothing else, it makes you appreciate game productions where everyone involved appeared to be on the same page at the end. Many people have their hands in games and may have totally different goals from one another.
Re: Reggie Fils-Aimé Is A Big Believer In Blockchain And "Play To Own"
Here's something that would make sense for the player: you exchange money for a game. Then you own the game. The End
Gamers can correctly recognize NFTs for what they are because we've seen it all before: glorified microtransactions, now with artificial scarcity. And on top of that crypto is threatening to make PCs unaffordable for the rest of all time. Great
Re: Random: Pixel Artist Reimagines Super Mario Sunshine As A GBA Release
Sunshine is 1st place in the series in terms of vibes, that's for sure.
Re: Splatoon 3's New Weapon Lets You Suck Up Paint And Fire It Back At Enemies
Yes you could just not shoot at it, but forcing your opponents to not shoot in a specific area is very strong. I'm also very interested to see how this works against other specials. It might basically cancel out an opponent's crab mech or inkzooka.
Re: Video: MVG Investigates The Switch Online GBA Emulator Leak
The part of this report that most caught my eye was the latest updates to the emulator being from 2020. Two full years ago?? If this was something intended to be released, then where is it? If there's a more current version, why was this one leaked?
This sure doesn't sound like an imminent release to me. It sounds more like vaporware. Maybe even leaked by someone disgruntled that all their work was for nothing.
Re: Review: Dark Deity - A Shameless But Satisfying Fire Emblem 'Homage'
If they were ripping off Fire Emblem, they forgot to rip off the map designs and units with different silhouettes.
Re: Random: Everyone Wants To Steal Target's New "Kirby Balls"
I guess people don't grasp the mountains of signage and packaging retail chains like this order, ship, and throw away every month. Not to mention fully functional product. And at the office supply store I worked at, we did literally zero recycling. These Kirby bollards are a drop in the ocean to them.
Re: Dragalia Lost To End Service Later This Year
From the sounds of it, this was another mobile experiment by Nintendo to see if they could make the gacha RPG formula less exploitative of its players, and still be successful. And of course they couldn't. The formula is rotten to its core, as is the market for it.
As for people wondering if it could make it to Switch in some form, I wouldn't hold my breath. The acquisitional part of a mobile game - the randomized gacha - is half the fun. The daily rewards and timed promotions keep players coming back. You remove those, and there's not much meat left on the bone.
I do think the characters and art style are appealing so it would be nice if they're seen again, beyond just cameos. Granblue has its 2nd spinoff console game in development, which was initially linked to PlatinumGames. But without a huge playerbase, doing something similar for Dragalia would be risky.
I try to be open-minded about different gameplay styles, but I really think there's not much salvageable about mobile gacha games. Whenever I try one and my screen is filled up with 8 different timed promotions and 12 different resource types, I just want to throw my phone in the ocean. It's the opposite of good game design. I think the main reason people give them the time of day is for convenience, because their phone is already on them at all times.
Re: Back Page: Why The Heck Does Kirby Hate This Tree So Much?
I've been advocating for Whispy Woods in Smash Bros ever since Ridley made it in. He's easily one of the most-seen and iconic bosses in all of videogames.
Re: Ori Developer Moon Studios Labelled "Oppressive" Workplace In New Report
In the west we put "small businesses" up on a pedestal so this is an uncomfortable topic, but much of the worst employee treatment I've experienced or heard of has been at small businesses or studios. Makes sense if you think about it - if a petty tyrant is in charge of one, they basically have zero accountability. No HR department, no one from corporate who has to read all their negative employee feedback, etc.
The games industry combines having teams of not that many people in the grand scheme of things, with being a creative field, which already tend to have low employee leverage. So it's not surprising at all whenever a story like this comes out.
Re: Random: Reggie Fils-Aimé Doesn't Think Much Of Facebook's Metaverse
I fully expect Google to do something similar as they run out of new things to sell to advertisers. Revenue can only go up, up forever! Infinite growth!
Re: Nintendo Slammed For Its Stance On Super Smash Bros. At 2022 Streamer Awards
I don't follow these guys closely but it's a weird contrast here with the best Street Fighter players in the world who are predominantly Japanese, like Daigo Umehara and Tokido, who are almost universally respected by fans, called "gods", and who Sony sponsors countless tournaments for because it's obviously fantastic advertising for them. Ditto for other series and stars like SonicFox and GO1.
Meanwhile you get this comment section making the best Smash Bros players on the planet out to be a bunch of attention-starved streamers and little else. Like yeah, they've spent their lives becoming the best in the world at a competition that millions of people watch and are familiar with, that does free advertising for Nintendo. If all I had to show for that was precarious twitch donations I'd be on edge too.
Re: Sakurai Is Back To Work, But It Might Have "Nothing To Do With Game Production"
Probably something in video. He's been directing all the Smash Bros trailers and cinematics himself, and he's written before about watching shows and movies at 1.5x speed while he's on the treadmill, like a nut.
Re: Chrono Trigger Gets Ultrawide 21:9 PC Update (But Still No Nintendo Switch Release)
I wish Nintendo did any kind of widescreen support for all its legacy content on the Switch. Black bars on the side of the screen are bad enough, but the Switch Online UI elements you can't turn off are even worse.
Re: Some Trainers Are Worried About Pokémon Scarlet And Violet Returning To "Traditional" Catching Mechanics
If you compare Arceus to a typical Pokemon game, it's content-poor. No gyms, almost no trainer battles, a decimated battle system, no multiplayer. It needed the repeated, action-based catching to be fun.
There is usually no reason to catch 20 or even 5 of a Pokemon, unless you are grinding for something really specific. If you proposed that mechanic to a Pokemon fan in 2019 they might even say it sounds like busywork.
One thing I liked about Arceus is it not actually forcing you to stealth headshot Pokemon over and over for research tasks - you could also usually get their dex entry just by battling with them a lot. That's a playstyle freedom that arguably won't be in Scarlet/Violet. But they'll have plenty of content in place of those research goals, trust me.
Re: Poll: Do You Think Pokémon Scarlet And Violet Have Eye Issues?
@Erigen We only ever see one of Cynthia's eyes. And she's a league champion!
Re: Hands On: Kirby And The Forgotten Land: More 'Super Mario 3D World' Than 'Mario Odyssey'
"unlockable side missions which see you take part in a host of minigames based around your various copy abilities"
YEAAAAAA if this anything like the Challenge Stages for each ability in Return to Dream Land, this is absolutely my jam. Those were such a highlight of that game.
Re: Random: Uh Oh, It Looks Like Steam Deck And Switch Might Have One Thing In Common
This is such an embarrassing time for the gaming industry. Imagine if early personal computers had mice that drifted all over the place. Or if the Famicom had a faulty d-pad.
This is THE way you interact with these platforms. How they could sell this out for cheaper/smaller components is beyond me. Nintendo, Sony, Valve, have all lost the plot.
Re: Gallery: Here's A Look At The New Open World In Pokémon Scarlet And Violet
Good riddance if they are indeed scrapping the catching pokemon outside of battle. Pokemon were meant to at least square up with you before fighting on your team the rest of the game, NOT get domed by a metal rock from 12ft behind them.
Nobody should need to scoop up 30 field pokemon in under a minute like they're Team Rocket just to have a good time with this game. But I can already hear the reviews complaining that there's too much RPG battling in this RPG.
Re: Feature: From Zelda Fangames To The Real Deal, We Talk To The Ocean's Heart Developer
I could also point to some Square titles that I'd say have better pixel art, but it's subjective. The larger point is it's an art style that still had so much to offer when the industry basically abandoned it after the GBA.
Not only is it a viable artistic choice, but there's clearly still a huge market for games with this style, as runaway successes like Shovel Knight, Stardew Valley and Undertale have shown.
Re: Random: 'Nintendo Generation' Skeletons Aren't Tough Enough, Says US Army Major
Telling how he doesn't call them the "Xbox generation". Of course they should all buy and play America's Army: Proving Grounds available on Xbox360 and PC
Re: Review: Ocean's Heart - Charming 2D Zelda-Like With Obvious Nods To Minish Cap
I was thinking, wasn't this already the name of a Zeldalike? Is this a rerelease?
I was thinking of Oceanhorn.
Re: This Good Smile Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Nia Figure Can Now Be Pre-Ordered For $259.99
You're telling me an anime character has another form that looks a little different? This is unheard of!!!
Shame on GoodSmileCompany for producing this plastic spoiler and posting spoilery pictures of it all over the internet. This is even worse than their figma Lucina from Fire Emblem: Awakening. The existence of Lucina is also a spoiler.
Re: Soapbox: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Is A Reminder That It's Never Too Late To Change
@Strictlystyles I also hate the modern "action RPG" and find they're usually just rubbish action games with some RPG elements sprinkled on top. I recoil at any suggestion that the turn-based battles should be scrapped so the main games can be Pokken Tournament Lite.
But what I take away from this article is much of that audience might be pleased with just getting to run around in the turn based battles. That's it. That's all this author apparently wanted in the battle system, is cosmetically running around. This also worked for Dragon Quest 11, so maybe Pokemon can just stick with that.
Re: Random: Is Rolling Faster Than Running In Pokémon Legends: Arceus?
Rolling doesn't require me to press that awful left stick button in, so it's got that going for it.
Re: Video: Slowpoke Sings Reggae To Promote Japanese "Udon" Prefecture
Great video but the Slowpoke mascot is moving too quickly.
Re: Super Mario's Movie Script Is "Top Secret", According To The Voice Of Luigi
"the movie's producer has also previously mentioned how phenomenal Chris Pratt's voice is as the voice of Mario."
Phew! Normally producers come out and are very honest when their stunt casted actors sound like crap.
Re: Soapbox: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Raises The Question - How Much Do Janky Graphics Matter?
Unironically I think modern 3D games should still utilize 2D assets more. BotW and this game do it a little bit, where if certain important objects are beyond draw distance, they'll have a flat sprite that gets loaded in 3D when you're closer. They should do that with everything. Objects swapping between 2D and 3D is way less distracting to me than pop-in.
This game and BotW have both been called "barren" by their fanbases and people freak out about the number of trees. Part of it is if you live in a place with trees, they're everywhere. These wild settings should have towering pine forests. That's too many objects to render? Idgaf, slap a 2D tree line in there. It's what games have always done. It works. The representation is more important than the realism.
Re: Round Up: The Pokémon Legends: Arceus Reviews Are In
I didn't like the latest 3 gens as much, but I can speak to them a little. Mega Evos changed the stats of pokemon but also gave them new abilities, some being exclusive and too powerful to be on a pokemon normally. For example Mega Kangaskhan mobilized its baby to make all its attacks hit twice (the 2nd hit at reduced damage). That was as OP as it sounds, even competitively.
Z-Moves similarly pushed how strong single attacks could be, for example Max Evoboost raising all your stats by 2 stages. There was an element of decision making because you might have multiple Mega or Z-Move eligible pokemon on your team, but could only trigger them once per battle, and they coexisted in Gen 7. In single player you might have a Gengar and a Gardevoir and have to decide which Mega is better for a matchup, or when to pop another mon's Z-move. Also the Mega stones and Z-stones took up item slots, so there was an opportunity cost there. The consensus with players is Megas were the more useful of the 2 because they stayed in Mega form the whole battle, whereas a Z-Move could miss or the pokemon that got its buffs could be forced out.
Dynamax could be seen as a middle ground between those, it's like a Mega Evo that only lasts 3 turns, with attacks that have Z-Move effects. All these were really centralizing in competitive play, but I will say Sword/Shield at least featured Dynamax in all the gym battles too. By the time you fight Leon and his Gigantamax Charizard, you've had plenty of exposure to it and will have a strategy of how to respond... even if that's just Dynamaxing the turn after he does. It puts you in the mindset of what you'd do against another player.
Finally, I think the experiments with battle size are interesting. X/Y had 1v5 "horde" battles that got panned because, well, you had to watch 5 pokemon attack, there was generally slow game speed, and maybe some performance issues on 3DS. They felt tedious. Sun/Moon replaced gym battles with "totem" battles where the boss pokemon could summon a helper, making it 1v2. I thought that had a lot of potential, although it felt like the correct play was always to ignore the helper and focus-fire the totem so it wouldn't get off free attacks. And the 4v1 "raids" in Sword/Shield are unique for being a Pokemon co-op mode. I didn't play them much but I have friends who spent the majority of their playtime doing raids. Any of those modes could improve the single player with a few tweaks, even if they're not 4v12 Final Fantasy fights like BloodNinja wants.
Re: Round Up: The Pokémon Legends: Arceus Reviews Are In
Double battles have become the official format of Pokemon's VGC because of how fast and dynamic they are compared to single battles, and how many attacks/strategies are designed with doubles in mind. I like them in single player too, they mix things up and let you see your pokemon complement each other in surprising ways. Or they're good for story beats where you team up with a rival, like with Dawn/Lucas. Ruby/Sapphire had a gym leader double battle with Tate&Liza, I wish there were more like that.
Gen 4: The physical/special split. This was sorely needed because previously, moves used the physical or special stats based purely on what Type they were. A move like Fire Punch should intuitively work on a physical pokemon with strong arms, but nope, it was a special attack before. Pokemon like Flareon or Feraligatr would have high attack stats but not use them well because oops, Fire and Water were special types only. Moves became physical or special on a case-by-case basis in Gen 4, which allowed a lot of Pokemon to finally use attacks of their own type well, which is how the game always felt like it should play.
Gen 5 arguably didn't add a major mechanic besides experimenting with Triple and "rotation" battles. But I consider the EXP overhaul really important to game feel. It rewarded pokemon much more for defeating higher leveled opponents, and much less for defeating lower levels. I think all RPGs should work like this, because it naturally prevents overleveling and keeps your party at similar levels to each other.
Gen 5 is fondly remembered mostly for other reasons. They had a more story-driven approach, where the game didn't end with you battling the Elite 4 and champion, but rather having the antagonist's plot climax at that point and open a different endgame area. They had a full set of 151+ brand new pokemon instead of bringing back old ones; this hasn't been done since. And B2/W2 are the only numbered sequels in the series, which put the whole region forward in time and expanded it with new areas and a new starting point. Anyway some Legends Arceus reviews have called it the best game in the series since Gen 5, which is the most encouraging thing I could hear about it, haha.
(cont)
Re: Round Up: The Pokémon Legends: Arceus Reviews Are In
@Kiwi_Unlimited OK, well as I see it the first 4 gens all introduced mechanics I'd consider indispensable:
(Sorry to NintendoLife for this wall of text, but this user asked and there's no DMs)
Gen 2: Held items and breeding. Held items are a big source of optionality in Pokemon because they have all sorts of effects, and don't make you spend a turn using them (if they're consumable), or they alter your pokemon in some other way while held. They were introduced with berries which were simple healing, but even some berries have more specific uses like healing a status effect you think you're going to get, or reducing damage of a certain type. So if you're heading into a boss fight you know will hit your best pokemon with a type they're weak to, or give you a certain status condition, you could pick a held item to counteract that. There are even some with negative effects, and ways to swap your item with your opponent to burden them. Competitive teams all use different held items, but I think some are pretty intuitive for single player too. For example, giving Air Balloon to your electric type so they dodge ground attacks, or Rocky Helmet to a more defensive mon so they can do some passive damage.
As for breeding, there are players who play Pokemon games just for the breeding mechanic, trying to make shinies or perfect pokemon. I don't do that myself, but it's fun to see what egg moves a pokemon learns. Those are moves they're not "supposed" to have but can get them if one parent is a certain species.
Also weather effects started in Gen II, the Special stat was split into 2 for attack and defense, 2 new types were added, some type interactions changed, and probably more I'm forgetting. It really overhauled the game.
Gen 3: Abilities and double battles. Abilities help differentiate pokemon from each other and give them different utilities. You might have a formerly weak Pokemon get an entry ability that summons weather or something, and become instantly more useful. There's a parallel to abilities in a lot of other RPGs, like Fire Emblem characters all having personal skills now, or TCGs having cards with static effects. There are some Pokemon that don't even make sense without their abilities, like Shedinja and Slaking. It's extra stupid that Legends Arceus removed abilities but still gave Regigigas the mechanical equivalent of Slow Start, its hindering ability. Just give all Pokemon their abilities!
(cont below, character limit)
Re: Round Up: The Pokémon Legends: Arceus Reviews Are In
@Kiwi_Unlimited I could make a similar list of things that have drastically changed from entry to entry, and you could call them "minor changes", and we would just argue in circles.
A common complaint in the Pokemon fandom is actually that GameFreak isn't making games enough like the old games, because the difficulty has been so lowered, and popular features like following Pokemon (HGSS) and the reworked exp formula of B&W will show up in one game and be pointlessly abandoned in the next. Even Mega evolutions, which were pretty centralizing in multiplayer battles, were hoped by many to be brought back in Sword and Shield DLC or the Diamond and Pearl remakes, because they added a lot to gameplay.
My biggest worry with Legends Arceus is the battle system will lack complexity for removing layers like held items and abilities, introduced in gens 2 and 3 respectively, that helped differentiate pokemon from each other and opened up many new strategies.
There are some Pokemon games I can play over and over, and others I never want to go back to. That doesn't sound like the same game for 26 years to me. You might as well say 2D Marios have been the same for 40 years because he always runs to the right and jumps on things.
Re: Round Up: The Pokémon Legends: Arceus Reviews Are In
@BloodNinja Pokemon Black and White introduced 3-on-3 battles in 2010.
Every generation of Pokemon games has innovated on the gameplay for better or worse. The changes in the most recent 3 gens (Mega Evolutions, Pokemon Amie and its friendship effects, horde battles, Z moves, removing the gym leader boss fights, Dynamaxing, and a "raid" system to name a few) have all gotten a mixed reception.
That will lead some people to call the series stale. It's not that the gameplay isn't being updated, it's not being updated in the ways people want. But it's absolutely untrue that it's been stagnant for 20 years. A Gen 5 fan trying Gen 1 games would probably find them slow and mechanically shallow.
Re: Even Miyamoto Doesn't Like "Stupid" Navi In Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
Pretty thoughtful take from Miyamoto, especially about how there's no consistency in where people get stuck. It's tough to design a hint system that works for all possible players.
Online guides might be a necessary evil for some puzzle games. Even though they take you out of the experience and the online environment for them keeps getting worse and worse with all the ads, link trees and fandom.com wikis.
Re: Random: Pokémon Legends: Arceus' Massive 'Mon Are Making Some Fans Uncomfortable
It maybe looks a little sillier with humanoid pokemon since we'd be particularly sensitive to the height of those relative to our trainer. And I'm guessing a lot of these screenshots are of the 1 of a kind "alpha" pokemon.
Maybe I'd prefer it to skew a little closer to their default sizes, but the variety is definitely needed in this game. It's not like they have different IVs or abilities in gameplay to differentiate them.
Re: Awesome Triangle Strategy Trailer Introduces Frederica And New Gameplay
Look at all the nice character portraits in this trailer that aren't used in gameplay at all! Can't wait for full, melodramatic voice acting to come out of 16bit-style map sprites for 50 hours
Re: The Pokémon Company Sets Its Sights On YouTube Videos Of The Fan-Made 'Pokémon FPS'
While I've always gone to bat for fan games, this crap is just so tasteless. The fact is there's actual, playable Pokemon fangames all over the internet that don't get taken down. It's not hard to see the difference between this video and those.
Re: Pokémon-Like Monster Catcher 'Coromon' Launches On Switch In March
I'll echo that compared to most Poke-clones, this looks like it has a lot of charm and care put into it, with actually nice sprite work and animations. And seemingly it avoids Nintendo-Hire-This-Man-isms like open world or mmorpg mechanics, or an overly edgy story, and instead is more faithful to the games that inspired it.
I'll keep an eye out for some independent reviews when it comes out, since mainstream channels don't tend to give these games much attention.