Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@nessisonett There were a large proportion of Johto plushies in the background of the presentation, so my guess is that the next announcement will be Let's Go games based on Gold and Silver.

@KratosMD Just to clarify, the Zeraora appearing in max raid battles can't actually be caught. It can only be battled. If one million trainers defeat Zeraora in max raid battles, then they'll distribute a shiny one through the mobile Pokemon Home app to everybody.

They should just port HeartGold/SoulSilver. The series hasn’t hit those heights since and it would probably go down better with fans than another game where it’s almost impossible to lose.

New Pokemon Snap; cool. Name's terrible though. I wish you were able to roam around and use the environment to your advantage when taking pictures.

@nessisonett @crimsontadpoles @KratosMD Do you think they'd release a major DLC expansion and new games in the same year? Maybe. But I didn't expect any new mainline games this year because of the DLC.

@Octane That's a good point. I'd been assuming the announcement would be a new game releasing towards the end of the year, but now I'm not so sure.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Yeah, Bandai Namco did Pokken Tournament as well. Not my kinda thing, but it's hard to argue that they make high-quality Pokemon spinoffs.

It's interesting, though, because the original had a completely different developer (HAL Laboratory, alongside some random, defunct Japanese developer). The original was a very cool rail shooter. It didn't have a lot of levels, but each level was fairly dense with content and photographic opportunities. You could throw "Pokemon food" (they're just apples; if you were mean, you could terrorize Pokemon hanging out along whatever track your vehicle was on by throwing apples at them) along with other items to trigger evolutions (new Pokemon to snap!), particular animations (at one point, I remember if you tossed an apple at a Voltorb, it'd get angry and explode, and capturing that explosion netted you mega points), alternate exits, etc.

Hopefully the Nintendo Switch sequel will be significantly denser with content, though.

@Ralizah “Nintendo Switch sequel”...”denser with content”
Oh dear, that’ll never happen. Switch games are brilliant at looking slightly nicer while having absolutely 0 replay value 😛

@nessisonett Clearly you've not played the new Persona Fire Emblem game with four different story routes and hundreds of social links support conversations to collect via endless NG+ replays.

@Ralizah True enough, Persona Emblem is one of the few gems among the Yoshi’s Crafted World, Kirby Star Allies, Arms, Sword/Shield and many other Nintendo first party games that feel like massive steps back from even the Wii U days. And they aren’t even ports.

@nessisonett There have been a few misses here and there, but, in general, I've been more satisfied with the first-party and exclusive output on Nintendo Switch than on any of the other modern platforms.

So, if I'm excluding upgraded ports...

Breath of the Wild, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Super Mario Odyssey, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (and Torna: The Golden Country), Astral Chain, Luigi's Mansion 3, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Splatoon 2 (and the Octo Expansion), Super Mario Maker 2, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Octopath Traveler are all pretty excellent, and we're just past the console's third year on the market.

In its first three years, the only comparably excellent exclusives from PS4 were... Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Ratchet & Clank (technically a remake of a PS2 game, but I'll let it slide since it saw such a drastic overhaul), Infamous Second Son (and First Light), and Bloodborne (I didn't like it, but the consensus seem to be wildly positive, so whatever). Am I missing any in that same time period that were great?

I don't think Microsoft released much of anything of acclaim in that time period aside from Ori and the Blind Forest. I want to play Sunset Overdrive, so I'll throw that in there. Gears of War 4 and Halo 5, maybe?

So, yeah, I'd say Switch is holding up magnificently so far.

Despite other peoples opinion on the matter, I think that the first party output on the Switch has been fantastic so far. You can clearly tell that they are churning out more content without having to focus on the Nintendo 3DS.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I deliberately left out remasters and re-releases like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, DKC: Tropical Freeze, Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition, etc. And original games like Daemon x Machina, Yoshi's Crafted World, ARMS, Kirby: Star Allies, etc. which were only moderately well-received.

I did accidentally forget two games in my list, though. Ring Fit Adventure and the remake of Link's Awakening also released in that third year.

I almost wanted to mention Dragon Quest XI S as well, since it's so dramatically improved over the PS4 release.

So, yeah, the output on Switch has been amazingly solid, considering the span of time it has been out.

https://www.siliconera.com/earth-defense-force-world-brothers...

So, EDF is FINALLY coming to Switch, but, as usual, there's always some sort of Wishmastery "be careful what you wish for" catch when that happens.

We got Kingdom Hearts... in rhythm game form. Now we get EDF... but the world is made of voxels.

@Ralizah It’s especially bad considering the new proper EDF is coming to the other consoles. The Switch really isn’t that weak and EDF really isn’t that much of a graphical powerhouse. Perhaps they’re already so much of a technical disaster that they’re worried a Switch port would unearth even more ‘bugs’ 😂

I only wish NIS had snagged the rights to the Trails games earlier, so that we could have the entire set on Switch. Falcom might not care about Nintendo fans, but NIS sure does!

@Ralizah I certainly prefer having specialist porters handling the conversion. Rather than potentially delaying the next game whilst the original developers try to get the game to work on multiple platforms.

I always thought it was odd that Switch didn’t get more Falcom support, they don’t make graphical powerhouses and the Vita/PSP poets were great. Since Memories of Celceta got ported to current consoles, I hope other Vita games like the Trails in the Sky Evo and Crossbell Evo games get ported as well.

@Ryall They do port older games to other platforms, though. Just not Nintendo ones.

Moreover, they're one of the oldest developers in the industry, so you'd think they could have figured out how to handle multiplatform development when even the majority of indies can handle that.

Their longstanding hesitance to put anything on Nintendo hardware has led even Japanese gamers to question if there's bad blood between the two companies. I think it's more about being in Sony's pocket, though, like several Japanese companies that really only want to develop games for Playstation hardware.

I'd bet dollars to donuts they'll remaster some of their older games for the PS5, even if Japanese sales on that platform are abysmal.

Well, I don't really mind so long as as NIS ports improve in quality. Ys VIII on Switch wasn't a great port, but the demo of Cold Steel 3 runs really, really well, so hopefully they're improving.

Thankfully, since Cold Steel 1 and 2 are on the Vita, the entire series can be played in portable form now.

MOBA + Tencent + free-to-play = hard pass for me.

There we go, there’s Tencent’s Nintendo involvement that everyone seems to conveniently forget about. It’s literally a reskin of about 9 games they have on mobile. I wonder how annoyed fans will be.