themightyant

@Deliesh You raise an interesting point. I've struggled with a lot of tactical RPG's because almost ALL of them are slow and ponderous to start with while they teach you the mechanics (often for over 10-20 hours). Each one after that, once you know the basic mechanics, seems even slower as they go over ground you already know. It's a very frustrating problem i've found with the genre. (I had the same thing with FFT A2, Tactics Ogre LoCT, Mario Rabbids battle etc.)

I know that doesn't answer your question but what I would say is if you persevere beyond this, there is a wonderfully rich story with intrigue and great characters, i've played it through 3 or 4 times over the years and it still hits me.

For my part I should try A2 again which, for exactly your reasons, I couldn't get on with.

TOP 12

1. FF6
2. FF7
3. FF Tactics (yes i'm cheating, but if it makes one person play it...)
4. FF9
5. FF8
6. FF12
7. FF5
8. FF4
9. FF10
10. FF15
11. FF13
12. X-2

Never played: XI, XIII-2, LR: FF XIII or XIV

Top Characters:

• All the cast of FF6 (Terra, Celes, Edgar, Sabin, Locke etc.)
• Vivi
• Auron
• Delita & Ramza
• Aeris

This sounds amazing.

Was about to download it...

... it's only available on Android for now 😢

Oddly I never have an issue with Playstation X prompts but XBox -> Switch literally swapping button positions realyl gets me in QTE's or eqivlents.

I couldn't disagree more. Played them at the time of their release and fell off both games. I never finished either till years later, the first time that had happened since Zelda II. These have a few good ideas interspersed with tedium. But each to their own.

The design on that is DOPE! 100x better than the usual uninspired official designs

Just a shame it's WIRED!

@riChchestM I agree, most of these are NOT good discounts comparted to most games. However they are about in line with what Square always does.

@Ventilator 100% agree, so many half thought out ideas... the use of proprietary Memmory cards, and their cost, was heinous. The clunky proprietary charger was another, it took for the near end of life Slim model to just use USB. Considering how quickly the battery drained carrying it about was a must, but with it it didn't feel very portable!

BUT... when it was used just to play games it was glorious and that OLED screen, still wow! Once the games ran out I ended up jailbreaking mine and it is an almost perfect emu system. If it had a proper R2 and L2 I would still use it more today.

@Ventilator Nice link. One can only dream.
Remind me how much I loved the Vita. Shame it was never fully supported.

"Love letter"? Ha! That is just about the most flagrant clone I have seen yet down to the typography, icon design and... well everything.

Not that i'm complaining with Psygnosis/SCE Studio Liverpool defunct and Sony seemingly uninterested someone needs to pick up the baton on this seminal series.

Hopefully this is more Streets of Rage 4 than Starfox

@ModdedInkling "It wouldn't make sense for Nvidia to cease production ENTIRELY if the Switch is doing incredibly well."

Unless Nvidia knows something we don't... Plenty have suggested the Switch Pro may not be the super upgrade some want and more of a revision that just replaces the current model.

@Abweegee Well aware SNES didn't have an online store, they still made it a limited run. The price of Mario All-stars at the time was artificially inflated on the second hand market as a result due to forced scarcity.

Wii was less lucky, as a digital only release, you simply couldn't buy it any more. Yes the NES versions were there, but by that rationale why do we ever need remasters?

I’m responsible for at least 5 sales.
Knowing it was limited I gave it to all my nieces and nephews and a couple of friends for Christmas. Didn’t want them to miss out.

@Abweegee I’d love to believe there is a twist to this and it will very soon be back on the store. But Sadly Nintendo have history here. The original 2D Mario All Stars only had a limited run on SNES. It didn’t reappear for 16 years before another limited run on Wii!!!

@My_ultimate_is_ready Thanks. But yours moves (and is badass!) 😂

Big fan of Phil. He is always trying to lessen or remove the barriers between the big companies.

He's been an open advocate of cross-play between systems, vocal about the problem of exclusives and more complimentary of the 'competition' than any other head.

When Sony or Nintendo wins an award he often congratulates them personally online. And he's a real gamer. What's not to like. Stay classy Phil.

@blockfight "I think nostalgia plays a huge part in how a lot of these remakes are received."

I generally agree, but nostalgia doesn't always work.

I played, and loved, Links Awakening when it launched on GameBoy. And again on GBC. Then I bought it and played in on Switch. While I did make it to the end, I didn't really enjoy it. To me the gameplay hadn't aged well even if the graphics were new and shiny.

On the flip side I've been playing both Crash and Spyro for the first time and really enjoying both. Though they too have their old school mechanics moments of frustration too.

This is cool. I have a friend who is a bespoke cabinet maker, well out of my price range for now, but we have discussed one day making a display cabinet for all my old controllers and consoles dating back to the 80s.

One day... until then this is awesome and I can dream.

@sikthvash Sadly I think you are right. It's clear to anyone who played the Ultimate Ninja Storm games that CyberConnect2 cared - felt like a series of games by fans for fans.

Sadly this isn't the case with many of Bandai Namco's releases which feel far more like "least effort possible" licenced cash grabs.

Played but never finished Bravely Default. Enjoyed it at first but it got boring to me fast. The story was too slowly drip fed between long grindy sections and never quite hit home.

Always meant to go back, but never did.

I replayed Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess quite recently and thought Skyward Sword, like Wind Waker before it, had really stood the test of time and was even better than I remembered.

Twilight Princess on the other hand was a (relative) disappointment.

I'll be intrigued to see how people get on with the Skyward Sword Remaster and if they feel the same.

@KateGray " With just over 2 million sales worldwide since its 2017 release - take Breath of the Wild's 23 million sales as a comparison"... let's not do this please.

2 million is a GREAT number for a niche title like this, that should be celebrated, not compared to larger titles.

Regardless, thanks for the interesting article, might have finally tempted me to dip back in and get Torna!

@AnnoyingFrenzy “Economics 101: Price a product not at what it's worth, but at what people are willing to pay for it.”

But isn’t what people will pay for it exactly what it’s ‘worth’?

Money is a made up concept attributing a value, or worth, of one made up item (special paper, metal in a certain shape or numbers in a bank) to a product or service. If most people are willing to pay a certain value for it, then that is what it is ‘worth’.

Regardless of the semantics - for me, and many others it seems, the entertainment this will bring is well worth £50/$60 and exceptionally good value for the number of hours of joy it will bring.

I generally never pre-order but this is a known quantiy, plus Nintendo games hardly go down in price, and can be had for less if you shop around (£42.95 at Shopto.)

Well that has me hyped. Now to breathe and come back to reality.

As others have said, It's called a DEMO Reggie, remember those?
Do it by download or by game streaming.

@jamesthemagi Just to add to @Kyloctopus excellent point.

Retirement often doesn't mean no work. A part of retirement, if you are in a fortunate position like Reggie, is also getting out of the daily grind having worked hard for many years. Instead doing work as and you want or need. In Reggie's case it's mostly getting called into do the fun social events without having to put in the daily grind in between.

I thought this would be awful. I was dead wrong.
Too funny 😂

Fantastic game. Far more than the sum of it's parts.

@RasandeRose Hmmm. Did you actually read my post? I wasn't uplifting Stadia, quite the opposite in fact, I gave the reasons why it's failing.

What I did say is STREAMING has a future, but not the way Stadia currently does it.

@Ventilator @RasandeRose It wouldn't surprise me if Stadia got hundreds of thousands of new USERS last year. They were offering GREAT deals like Cyberpunk + a Chromecast Ultra + a Stadia controller + a month of Stadia Pro for LESS than the price of a Chromecast Ultra. They also did this for other games. These were always very highly upvoted on Reddit, HotUKDeals etc. suggesting a lot of purchases.

MANY, myself included, jumped on these deals (I wanted a Chromecast for the back room anyway.)

The trouble is that this sort of loss leader doesn't work if those new USERS don't become new SUBSCRIBERS. I suspect they lost a LOT of money financing these offers with not enough people jumping into the ecosystem. They will have the metrics for all this and see it all heading in one direction.

To be clear Stadia and streaming in general is fine. This isn't why it's failing, instead it is:

• the lack of games
• the anti-consumer/unpopular business model
• they never differentiated themselves and their exclusive features
• Google never sold Stadia as a brand to the consumer & gamers

Streaming has a big future, particularly for the masses not us enthusiasts, but not like this.

My Switch is mostly gathering dust. With both a PS & Xbox and with lockdown there's no reason to go handheld/leave the house I'm buying everything on other more powerful systems.

Come on Nintendo, I want to give you my money. Give me something to play!

@twztid13 You are right the difficulty pads it somewhat but that could be said of any ‘hard’ game. People have speedrun Bloodborne in less than 30 mins! I’m certainly an experienced, albeit slow (check all corners) gamer and 8-10 hours was probably about right for me any longer and it might have outstayed it’s welcome.

There’s also some replay value in the way the game is structured it’s really fun to go back to earlier levels with your seeming god like powers compared to first time through and it’s been designed carefully for this, it’s more fun than most games to replay.

In terms of cost I got it on Game Pass but I’d say that £18/$25 price is about right.

@SwitchVogel Good review.

I realise this is subjective but having now played and finished it, I disagree that it is too short. It doesn't outstay it's welcome or get tired unlike so many modern games. There is no padding/filler. This is a BIG plus in my book. Couple of really frustrating, borderline unfair, sections aside this was a great experience.
8.5/10

That looks great. But having 100% this on WiiU I'll need some convincing that this is more than a short addition

As others have said this really doesn't solve many of the discoverability problems on the store at all. It only raises the bottom bar of those doing bargain sales.

@dartmonkey Thought provoking piece. I will have to find some time to read through the comments too.

Have always considered myself a player (badum tish) but with an ever increasing backlog of hundreds of games spread over most platforms and consistently failing to finish more games than I buy perhaps I need to re-evaluate that moniker.

Interesting! Thatgamecompany has earned my allegiance with many great titles but bounced off the touch controls on mobile.

@dux feel exactly the same about touch controls, greasy screens and blocking the view. Plus with almost 500 hours logged on Genshin Impact (on PS4/5) I can say with authority - It will be worth the wait.

EDIT: just hoping the game doesn't use the (virtually never used) touchscreen on the Switch for controls.

@Djole "Ok, i thought it was David Bowie there with a giant sword!"

Can't be unseen! lol

I usually can't stand all the gaming chintz - dislike waste & clutter - but these are stunningly beautiful. So much talent.
Chrono Trigger £80 tempted...

@nessisonett whisky doesn’t age like wine. So a 10 year old single malt from 30 years ago is still a 10 year old single malt not a 30-40 year old one. Upside, is it doesn’t go bad unlike wine.

While it would be worth quite a bit more, if unopened, due to scarcity it’s generally not on the same exponential chart as vintage wine.

Still a shocker however. I’ll raise a dram tonight in the memory

@3RedTriangles You seem to have misunderstood.

The Golden Joysticks are the largest video games awards voted for by fans. It holds the Guinness World record for number of votes. (4+ million in 2012) so is all the public in cahoots? or are you just wrong.

Mario Kart only at 20!!!
and no Pilotwings???
...of course you are entitled to your own (zany) views

30 years later and now i'm confused. I have the EU console but apparently the NA box. Is this correct?

Technologically this looks amazing.

Ergonomically... my hands are cramping just watching the video!

Despite not being the intended demographic for these adverts, or not knowing who Awkwafina is, I found both of these quite charming and very Nintendo.

Anything that opens up gaming to a wider audience is good in my book.

@Zeldafan79 The cubes kinda fitted in with the aesthetic of those levels, and sometimes these paths are deliberately visible in video games so it wasn't that noticeable. I would have just thought it was part of the game design had I not been forewarned.

That Enderman is brilliant! lol

What a beautiful art style. Painterly.

I still desperately want Galaxy 2.

I played it a bit on Wii after playing Galaxy on the 3D Collection. Here are my thoughts

• The Yoshi sections in Galaxy 2 require using the stick, buttons and pointing simultaneously
• The Joycons are surprisingly very responsive as replacement Wii Remotes, as is the pro controller, so they could easily do for the Yoshi sections in docked or tabletop mode. Plus they don't require line of sight unlike the Wii which is a bonus.
• However for handheld mode you need to touch the screen instead, which would require three hands. They could solve this problem by using the same joycon motion controls. Yes it would be a little odd to have to tilt the view of the screen but it could work as the movements are very small and subtle.
• Alternatively they could change the controls for Yoshi all together.
• I can't see any other reason this CAN'T have been done but understand why you might not want to package it together as lite and handheld users may stuggle as is.

Here's hoping we get a Switch version down the road (maybe on Apr 1st after timed exclusivity)

This is sad, although their trajectory has been slowly downhill imho.

2000-2010

• Dark Cloud
• Dark Chronicle
• Dragon Quest VIII
• Rogue Galaxy
• Jeanne d'Arc
• 4 x Professor Layton
• Ni No Kuni (DS)
• White Knight Chronicles 1 & 2

@Jokerwolf True but some people, like me, aren't so good at games that require split second reactions and twitch type gameplay that this looks like.

Outside of that I love everything about this.