Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@Ralizah Thanks for the suggestions. Since the whole switch situation (console+memory card+controller) slowly ate my wallet I opted for the cheapest solution possible
https://www.amazon.co.uk/TNP-Nintendo-Switch-Guards-Thumb/dp/...
This is a semi decent grip that allows docking but I wanted a "better" solution since I still don't find it comfortable for long portable sessions.

@Fight_Teza_Fight I couldn't stand the characters and voice acting in the original XC, but I found them charming in the second game, oddly enough. Even with Rex's horrendous karate yelling.

Re: opening core crystals, open all the commons as soon as you get them. It's important to have a large stable of normal blades for... reasons you'll find out. Just be sure not to horde them all on Rex.

I saved most of my rare crystals for later, when I increased my idea levels noticeably. But there's probably no harm in opening them now.

@KratosMD Glad you're enjoying it! The demo was a bit easy, but I hear it gets more challenging in the full game. It runs really nicely on the Switch, and (in the States, at least), if you preorder, you get this nice steelbook with your game.

Definitely Switching to Japanese in the full release, though. Didn't care for the voice acting in the demo.

I don't know if you already own it on PS4, but Ys VIII is coming to the Switch at the end of the month as well.

So it looks like the Switch will be getting Mutant Football League this fall

https://www.mutantfootballleague.com/single-post/2018/06/13/M...

"Octopath Traveler will come to the Nintendo Switch on July 13, 2018, though people can now pre-purchase the game from the eShop. The main story of the game will take 50-60 hours to complete and the main story with substories will take 80-100 hours. The three-hour demo coming on June 14, 2018 will let people use any of the eight characters and carry save data over to the full game."

Pretty sweet that it carries over!

@KratosMD yeah I'm taking those timings with a pinch of salt. That said, it's the team behind Bravely and they are 100 hour plus if you like. But lots of repetition, padding and grinding. I'm hoping OT doesn't go the same way. 100 quality hours please. Like XBC2!

So pretty much the first party lineup for the second half of the year is...

July: Octopath Traveler (published) & Captain Toad (port)
August: Go Vacation (published)
September: XC2 story DLC?
October: Super Mario Party
November: Pokemon LGP/E
December: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

So, a pretty constant, albiet mostly unremarkable, release schedule (I do expect one or two more ports and/or published titles to pop up though, likely in a later Direct, being smaller releases).

For me personally, Smash is a definite, and I'll likely grab one or both of Octopath & Captain Toad at some point. However, I'm not disappointed too much with their upcoming lineup as I have quite a bit of interest in the many mid-tier Japanese games coming to the system (Ys VIII, Shining Resonance, Okami HD, SNK Heroines, etc.), and heck, I may even grab Wolfenstein II.

Please announce Animal Crossing for August or September, Nintendo. It's a physical need at this point.

@Ralizah Thanks I’ll do that! Going to open up all my commons later then. I really didn’t want to use the Rares as I noticed I can ‘boost’ the blades considerably during awakening, if I had enough resources.

@Fight_Teza_Fight Don't worry too much about boosters early on (but don't let them go to waste, either; most times you release a blade, you'll get some sort of booster unless you're topped off, in which case you need to use some while opening core crystals). What they primarily do is artificially boost your idea levels. Now, idea levels do two things:
PRIMARY EFFECT: Idea levels impact your likelihood of receiving blades of a certain element
SECONDARY EFFECT: Idea levels might affect your chances of summoning stronger blades.

In terms of what idea level/booster type corresponds with what element:
Bravery is Fire and Water
Truth is Wind and Ice
Compassion is Electric and Earth
Justice is Light and Dark

Now, keep in mind that while these definitely make it more likely that you'll draw a blade of a certain elemental affinity, and while they might add slightly to your chances of obtaining a stronger blade, they don't seem to make it more likely that you'll receive a rare blade (although, late game, this kind of reverses).

The only actual thing that seems to affect whether you character is more or less likely to receive a rare blade besides the quality of the core crystal is the character's luck stat, so I'd advise you to always switch accessories to one that affects luck when you open blades.

Anyway, early on, you have lots of rare blades in each element to find via RNG, so it makes more sense to use the weaker core crystals. Later on, when you have only a few RNG rare blades to find in particular elements, boosters work out well because even though they don't inherently boost your chances of getting rare blades they make it more likely that you'll randomly draw from a pool of blades that's hiding a rare, thus actually making it more likely that you'll find a rare blade if you use the right booster than if you just left it to your natural idea stat spread.

Some rares are also found in sidequests and as part of the main story.

Anyway, a few more tips I'd give, based on challenges I faced in my run of the game:

• Start working on the affinity charts for your rare blades as soon as you can. If it hasn't become apparent yet, their field skills allow you to overcome stat checks in side-quests. This will become a massive barrier to your ability to complete side-quests very quickly. This frustrated me early on, but once I cultivated a decent spread of higher level field skills, this frustration mostly went away. There are also a few stat checks throughout the game you'll need to pass to continue the main story, so, again, this is crucial.
• If you find you need to release your common blades because you have too many, be sure not to release ones that have more field skills. Always start by focusing on ones with no idea skills. The more field skills a common blade has, the more useful it'll be to you in the long run. Again, without saying much, you'll find out why soon, as it becomes a major part of the game.
• Without spoiling anything, Informants can have important information related to rare blade-containing side quests in this game, so I'd advise you to check with them pretty regularly in case their information updates.
• The combat is still pretty basic right now, but it deepens significantly later on. It's a bit hard to understand at first, but once you do, the systems in this game are exhilarating to exploit.

Sorry for the text walls.

@Fight_Teza_Fight @Ralizah Personally I just stock piled a bunch of cores until I had 99 common and however many of others and burnt through them all as quickly as possible. Annoyingly this was before the option to skip the birth animation was patched in! I could have been smarter about it, I guess.

I only got about half the blades in the end, although I am getting more on my (slow) second play through.

I honestly didn't change my teams around too much once I had a good set of Blades covering all my elements, so the only reason to get more at that point was for the field abilities. Pretty annoying when you were stopped dead in your tracks mid-quest because of a missing field ability for a Blade you didn't have which you needed to get through RNG! One of the games querks though, I guess!

The question is.. how long is the DLC going to be, do we think?

I was only missing seven or so of the rare blades by the end. I figured there was no point in grinding for them when the DLC and New Game + would add additional rares anyway.

Incredibly annoying. Which is why he should develop his rare blades early on and build a stable of common blades with a lot of different field skills, so he doesn't run into that sort of frustration as often. I didn't know it would become such an obstacle when I was playing the game, so it made the mid-game a bit more frustrating than I think it needed to be.

In general, the game could stand to explain itself more clearly to the player. Same for all of these Xenoblade games, though. At least it's not nearly as bad as XCX on this front, which explained almost nothing in-game, forcing me to read the digital manual.

It's getting a retail release, so it's definitely going to be meaty. $30 DLC had me very nervous (I hate spending on DLC in general), but I'm definitely picking it up at this point.

I finally finished a second play of XC2! Getting all the blades is somewhat frustrating in the end when you miss only one or two and it may get in your nerves seeing the same common blades over and over again. In the end of the day boosting your luck does not seem to make much difference. The game will break when cloud saves are introduced. You can upload the save and redownload if you get zero rare blades.

The extra dlc missions were lame till now but I really look forward to the expansion prequel. They never fixed the framerate issues in the main game though but to be honest the only problem I have with the game is the lame (imho) final battle and ending. The plot become less engaging as the game moved to the end.

I really thing to preload Octopath since I already have some credit and gold points left...

@KratosMD Yeah I thoroughly enjoyed Mario. I've played a few of the 2D and 3D games a little bit in the past but only a few minutes here and there. Was hooked on Oddysey! I have about 750 power moons, maybe I'll go back and finish them off one day..

Quite disappointed there has been no substantial DLC for it, frankly.

Where you up to?

@KratosMD Yeah hope so! To be honest best to get your fill on other games and leave a big window open for XBC2 lol. Just downloaded the Octopath demo myself, sounds good:

"In this demo, you can choose one of the 8 characters like in the full game, and experience the first chapter of their travels. Within this area of the first chapter, as long as it’s within 3 hours, you could set out to have other characters join your party, or even just go and explore towns and dungeons without any particular goal in mind. Travel the continent of Orsterra however you want. Your save data from the demo can be carried over to the full game so you can find your favourite character, and start playing through their story however you like."

Primrose and Olberic's stories were the only ones featured in the previous demo. Wasn't a huge fan of the Olberic storyline (it wasn't bad, just unremarkable), but Prim's story setup was INCREDIBLY dark and compelling.

The battle system is fun. A nice evolution of the system in the Bravely games, imo.

Lovely music, too. It's looking like it'll be a winner all-around.

I am playing as Teressa the merchant, only 15 minutes in - liking her though!

@KratosMD I don't think there is.

@KratosMD There's a high possibility somebody licked the cartridge at some point in the past.

But no, there's no real downside I can think of to buying used Switch games.

@KratosMD the only negative I see is money not going to the devs, if you're into all that. Personally I very rarely buy used games, but I have a bit more disposable income these days so don't mind buying new. That said my game buying in general has slowed down a bit this year.

Congrats on your purchase, you have a lot of plates to spin by the sounds of it!!

I played an hour and a half of Octopath and had to stop so I have a bit to play tomorrow. Gutted I'm going to have a to wait a month after to play more!!!

I used to buy used games all the time last gen, but there are so many sales and deals and whatnot now with new games that the secondhand market has lost its luster for me.

I'm less concerned about supporting games from big publishers than I am from smaller ones, though, which is why I typically buy niche games from small publishers new and wait for AAA games to drop in price.

Unless they're Nintendo, in which case I usually buy day one because they almost never discount their games anyway, so the 20% preorder discount is my best bet for getting the game at a lower price.