Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@Ralizah That whole Direct felt like the end of the 3DS, when there were loads of unexpected ports and also like the Wii U when Breath of the Wild was being held until the next console arrived. It’s strange, the Switch should be in its prime but it prints money without them trying so of course they aren’t going to try. Covid isn’t really an excuse when you look at the games coming from third parties and on other consoles. It’s just plain strange.

@nessisonett I REALLY hope this doesn't point to the Western release of Nocturne HD being delayed.

And Gnosia was listed as "early 2021" on Nintendo's website. What the heck happened to that?

Rune Factory 5?

Disco Elysium?

They can't even use the excuse of "it's focused on the first half of the year," because a number of 2022 or late 2021 projects were highlighted.

I'm still baffled that Crash Bandicoot 4, which looks pretty genuinely good, wasn't even mentioned in the Direct, but F2P garbage and shovelware was.

@Ralizah I totally forgot about Gnosia which looked pretty great. And also Rune Factory 4 is up there with my favourite games of all time and the fact I completely forgot they announced the sequel what feels like years ago does not bode well. I can’t believe so much time was given to Plants vs Zombies and that dreadful looking EA game with the worst humour I’ve ever heard in an advert. Plus that Star Wars game is going to be a dumpster fire, it’s made by Zynga who literally made their name making crap pay to win Flash games on Facebook back in the day. You’ve got to wonder how much you have to pay to get into a Direct.

@nessisonett That's what particularly annoys me about this. Good stuff is coming. This year. But it's totally clear that companies are just paying to have their trash highlighted in Directs now. If Directs are just going to be dumping grounds for trailers of games that nobody would be willing to watch otherwise, then what's the point of them?

The people who are doing Directs now clearly don't care about curating what's highlighted.

@nessisonett So much time for PVZ.

It was a 1:40 trailer my guy.

So, on a more positive note, the demo for Triangle Strategy is very much worth playing. Deeply stupid name for a game, but it's a new Final Fantasy Tactics in everything but name, just with the gorgeous presentation of Octopath Traveler. Between those two games and the Suikoden spiritual successor coming out, I'm really liking this new HD-2D style. It feels like a proper evolution of the way a lot of games looked on the original Playstation.

I feel like the team that made Octopath and Triangle succeeded in the way that Tokyo RPG Factory was supposed to, but never did: their games are deliberately nostalgic and old-fashioned, but the cool art-style keeps them from feel anachronistic.

@Ralizah I’m definitely looking forward to giving it a go. I love Final Fantasy Tactics (I love Advance more, sorry not sorry) and it’s nice to see a genuine follow up done in that beautiful style.

@Ralizah The 'problem' with Bowser's Fury is that it easily could've been its own thing. It's in no way tied to 3D World, and even the gameplay feels different. It's just gated behind another Wii U port so they can ask full price for it. I've seen gameplay videos, and if it was a €20-30 thing, I totally would've bought it, but no way I'm paying full price for that alone.

@Octane Well, sure, it's not enough if you have no interest in the main course. If you're like me, though, and have wanted a portable version of 3D World for a while. but don't really want to pay full retail for a game you already bought at full retail years ago, then the QoL improvements, image quality bump, and addition of a meaty side-campaign add enough incentive to make it a worthwhile purchase.

And I think, just in general, it's a compelling way to add value to an old product.

And, you know, for 85% or so of the Switch's total playerbase, it's effectively a brand new release, because they never purchased a Wii U, and probably didn't know anyone who purchased a Wii U.

On the subject of that expansion, actually, I'm enjoying Bowser's Fury, but I don't know if I'd want a full retail release modeled after it. I'm not sure the open-world approach really adds anything to Mario, and the Fury Bowser segments aren't really all that dangerous. Interestingly, it becomes just another tool for Mario's collect-a-thon gameplay, because you have to wait until the big guy resurfaces and then lure him over to specific areas that are hiding collectibles.

It's hard to complain when the expansion is beautiful, fun, and dense with content, though.

@Ralizah The problem is that there are always a large audience that haven't played the older games. That's just what happens. Every console generation there's a new audience of children that were too young to play the last one, and a new influx of gamers that didn't own the last console for whatever reason.

I've had Nintendo consoles since the 90s. Every console generation had a bunch of games I was interested in. New IPs, new big releases. I pretty much own nearly every first party Wii U title. With the Switch, for the first time, this doesn't hold up for me anymore.

Looking at my game 'library', I've got Oddysey and Splatoon 2, which were both great games. I have Yoshi, which was somehow more lacklustre than the Wii U entry. I own Pokemon Sword, and I don't need to say more about that. And last year I got Animal Crossing, which is a great game, because it's Animal Crossing, but I also stopped playing sometime last year. There isn't much else that grabs my attention right away.

Still waiting on Zelda (hopefully it'll be better than BOTW), Metroid, Pikmin, Donkey Kong Country. Those are the franchises I buy their consoles for. Even the Wii U introduced some new ideas like Splatoon and Captain Toad. The latter wasn't a new IP technically, but it doesn't play anything like a Mario game. More importantly, there's nothing truly new of that scale on the Switch yet; something new that rivals Mario, Zelda or Pokemon from Nintendo. It feels like they're playing it very safe.

There's just such a big focus on filler stuff IMO. Shallow Mario sports titles, Wii U ports, ports from third parties that several years to a decade old. The Switch is just playing catch up at this point, and I've already played all the interesting titles on other platforms. It's probably a great console if you are a Switch-only gamer, but otherwise not so much. We're four years in, and it feels like I'm still waiting for the good stuff...

@Kidfried At least with the Mario collection they came down to 20 per game. Arguably still quite a lot for bare minimum ports, but already a step ahead of most of the €60 ports.

@Octane Almost nobody bought the Wii U, though, so it presents a more unique opportunity than re-releases from other platforms. 12 million people is nothing for a modern console.

Anyway, if you only own a platform for a small handful of exclusive franchises that may or may not appear on it, that's the risk you're going to take with a new console. Like, I've gone for 9+ months at a time without really playing anything on PS4, because I bought a PS4 for a tiny number of exclusive games, one of which was a complete no-show (Silent Hills), as I prefer to play the majority of multiplats on PC (now Switch, since that's an option for the majority of non-AAA releases). Before 2017, it got jack all in the way of decent exclusives, and then, when the "big" exclusives started rolling out, they were broadly stuff I had no interest in and mostly ignored.

That's not really Sony's fault, though. The exclusive console releases just didn't jive with me.

I will grant you this, though: there have been some cool new I.P.s launched on Switch exclusively, but none of them have been from Nintendo so far. The biggest attempt they made at a new core franchise was at launch with ARMS, which... yeah. That didn't work out.

That's not really a problem for me, though. I think Nintendo is better at iteration than innovation when it comes to software. And, frankly, they tend to experiment a lot with existing properties as it is.

@Octane LOL I am pretty sure SS for Wii and the Wii U HD ports were 50€ each.

Someone might say that Project Zero will be the only Wii U true exclusive game, since Xenoblade X will surely come to Switch sometime, but the console is a treasure even you are in "legal" retro gaming. Surely the whole conole OS is a slow mess, the emulation quality is questionable and you cannot buy Mega Drive and Master System games any more since they discounted the Wii eshop but there is still a ton of stuff easily accesible that you can hook in an hd tv easily. I have folders with Final Fantasy, Metroid, Castlevania, Zelda, Sonic etc. in my Wii U home screen ready to play!

The Direct was a dreadful snooze, and the calibre of many games showcased were shovelware-tier poor. Especially that bizarre DC thing. Then there were ports, ports and more ports. The people doing the narration seemed almost as bored as I was.
Rather surprised by the remaster of Miitopia, as I imagine it would be low on the list of 3DS games people would like to see remastered on the Switch.
I love Skyward Sword, but £50 is a ridiculous fee. Are we paying a penny for each jaggy on the screen at any one time? Will Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD also be £50 each when they get inevitable rereleases?

@belmont Skyward Sword on the Wii U was €19.99/$19.99 at launch.

@mookysam it’s funny cause I basically enjoyed everything in that direct! I tend to have very different thoughts on stuff but, they kept major Nintendo announcements for the beginning middle and end and seemed to balance out the smaller and bigger 3rd party games well between the 1st party games. Certainly a bunch there I’m going to have to buy day one like Pyra, Fall Guys, Worlds End Club, Skyward Sword, Splatoon 3, and more. Gotta say it was better than the last two directs in 2019 IMO

I hate how for years, the Wii U was ‘terrible’ and nobody wanted one until they’ve now realised how many great games were on it and are perfectly ok with paying full price for ports. If you want to play those games, you should have bought a Wii U. It can’t have been that bad a console if people are paying £50 for each game in 2021.

@Blooper987 Cool, I'm glad that there was stuff you're excited about playing, and there will always be things to cater for different tastes. Pyra is a bit of a strange choice for Smash Bros. for me as I personally can't stand the character, but Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was a popular game so I imagine many people are looking forward to her release. One game I am interested about is Project Triangle Strategy, let's just hope they settle on a better name!

@nessisonett The Wii U's hardware is horrible though. It did have some excellent games, but I'm not sure they were enough to entice people given the lack of third party releases and long, frequent software droughts. Considering this was an era when people could get their Nintendo fix on much better supported 3DS, I'm not sure people can really be blamed for not wanting a Wii U.

@nessisonett Exactly.

Though I do wonder how much they actually sell to the wide audience. Maybe it's just a couple of million diehard fans that were going to buy anything anyway that buy these games. So it's an easy quick buck for Ninty.

@Octane There just comes a point where you have to tell people to buy the original hardware instead. We can’t keep going through this cycle of re-releasing games on every single new console. The PS5 and Xbox are backwards compatible and whatever Nintendo does next better be too, the Wii U and 3DS were so much the better for not having to pad out their libraries with so many barebones ports.