Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@Ralizah that's fair enough, I think I will disagree but that's OK! I think the definitions of these words (or lack thereof) get muddied by different interpretations as well as marketing-speak by companies. I feel like OoT is significantly different enough in a few different ways for me to class it as a remake but I don't expect everyone to agree with me on that. I think the only thing that I definitely wouldn't class it as, is a reboot!!

It might just be because I'm coming at it from a film perspective though. If they replaced all the "graphics" in a film by recasting the actors or replacing them completely with CGI or animation then I wouldn't call it a remaster even if they used the same script.

Not sure about xenoblade really, I haven't played it so I couldn't form an opinion on it. I did have a quick look at screenshot comparisons and they do look quite different between versions. Hmm, not sure!

I feel like I'm the only one that loves Skyward Sword. It helps that I didn't play it in its time, and I couldn't stand Twilight Princess on the Wii enough to finish it. After playing TP on WiiU it's one of my top 3 Zeldas, but on the Wii, the inverted dungeons felt wrong, the controls were horrific, and the blur filter was nauseating. So I never played Skyward Sword on Wii, heard all the complaining and just accepted Nintendo went down casual street. I ended up playing SS on WiiU out of boredom with the console, and absolutely loved yet. Yes, the linearity, the anime tropes, etc etc suck. But darned if the dungeons aren't some of the best dungeons in the series. It's imbalanced though. No overworld exploration, it's just all one giant set of dungeons. Kind of makes up for BotW being one giant over world with almost no dungeons.

@ralphdibny SMT isn't technically set in a school. The characters often start loosely as some kind of school student, mostly as an "origin story" but then it quickly leaves the school environment, unlike Persona. Nocturne, for example (PS2, PS4/5, NSW) technically starts with 3 school kids meeting their teacher. After the first 10 minutes you never have any reference to school anything again (and become a demi-demon...) SMT4 it's "cadets" in some sort of medieval type city-in-the-clouds. I guess technically a school/military academy/something. And that acts as a partial hub in the game, but there's really no school construct and is just a world in chaos. The SMT games mostly take place in the post-destruction world where the demons have mostly taken over. Any humans left (if any, depending on which SMT game) are more like survivor camps.

Persona is more of a traditional JRPG with a lot of dialogue and story. SMT is more of a classic Western dungeon crawler where the story hits at plot points, but otherwise stays out of the way of the crawl.

I've been playing the HD rerelease of Nocturne, and honestly I forgot how bad some of these older JRPGs really age. The dungeon design of single-texture endless corridor mazes, the rare access to save points blocked by random encounters, the huge loss of progress if anything goes wrong. And the dungeons are technically too large for the lack of saves. Press-turn combat is strong as ever, but exploring the game feels like a chore. I'd be tempted to throw it in Merciful just to see through to the end, but so far combat hasn't really challenged me (4 was waaay harder, IMO, I don't get the Nocturne legacy. It's not difficult, it's just obnoxiously time-abusive if you die, which is worse.)

I wasn't a big fan of the some of the cartoonish character designs. That octopus boss comes straight out of a Pixar movie.

Problem with the game were the controls. They weren't intuitive. It wasn't until I saw someone else struggle with the controls and learn how you're supposed to play it that I understood why I didn't like it.

Whenever you encounter an enemy that blocks your attacks, and follows your movement pattern, this becomes an issue. With Ghirahim especially. Hold your sword to the right, and he will hold his hand in the mirror position, blocking any slashes from right to left. So the obvious solution is to hit him from left to right. I tried moving the sword to the left first, and the problem is that you have to do it slow enough for it not to register as a slash from right to left, and then try to hit him. But he usually is fast enough to move his hand to another position.

Now, the trick is that you just swipe your Wiimote to the right. Even though your sword is already at the right position, Link will deal a left to right slash. Understanding this would've made it a lot easier I think. It's not a 1-to-1 sword combat system. But that would be the intuitive thought.

I also never managed to get that heart piece from the rhythm game in the pumpkin. I've had multiple people try it for me, but none could succeed. So it's the only Zelda game to this date I haven't fully completed yet.

@NEStalgia ah fair enough, I'm not sure which SMT is supposed to be that "if..." version or if it's a spin off or something anyway.

You are definitely not the only who loves skyward sword though! I played it when it came out and thought it was awesome! I can't wait to play it again when I get the chance. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks 🤞🤞

@ralphdibny Yeah, "If...." was one of two spinoffs between II and III: Nocturne. It changed things up with the more story driven, cardboard character to play with the school setting, etc, and was never localized. It arguably is sort of "Persona 0" more than SMT 2.4. It's half way between both but clearly set up a prototype formula that would eventually become Persona. The other spinoff at that time was supposed to be an SMT MMO for Xbox that then got converted into a single player game instead of MMO. After Nocturne they also did an MMO for PC called "Imagine." The "mainline" games are all SNES (or PS1) games, Nocturne (now on PS4 & Switch), 4 and the stand-alone sequel on 3DS, and the upcoming 5 on Switch. Strange Journey is sort of a spinoff on DS, but should really count, too.

Some might say the stand alone sequel to 4 on 3DS also went a little bit in the Persona direction.

5 is curious. It borrows the interface from TMS#FE, the SMT/Fire Emblem crossover that was a lot more like Persona despite the SMT/Devil Survivor (the SRPG spinoff series) team working on it. 4 was brutally hard, but it got rid of random encounters, so that alone makes it great. Wonder if there's an inevitable PS4/Switch port of 4 coming.

@Octane The real threat is the lips. That's not art style, that's just model abuse. I agree, though, the controls were horrible, and it was billed as 1:1 sword control The fact that it was actually a directional waggle minigame really ruined the controls and made it frustrating to play. The stick isn't amazing but it's sure better than that. And the tendency to swing full-arm blows of the sword, frantically.

@NEStalgia Mid-to-late game Nocturne is more difficult than SMT IV, IMO, which becomes pretty trivial difficulty-wise as the game goes on. With that said, I've long maintained Nocturne doesn't deserve its hardcore reputation, just like IV doesn't after leaving Naraku. I think the issue is you have to actually put some thought into what you're doing when you play these games. DQ and FF can both be finished with little more than level grinding involved, but SMT will stomp you if you don't diversify your skill load-out, fuse new demons, build parties around the weaknesses and strengths of certain bosses, etc.

Anyway, while Nocturne is still a great game and definitely the turning point for the series when it comes to modernizing the mechanics, the old-school labyrinths where 80% of floor space is dead ends and/or teleportation tiles are pretty tiresome. It's one reason I'm so happy SMT V looks so... open! It's a natural evolution of IV/IV: Apocalypse''s level design, where you spent more time running around the streets of cyberpunk Tokyo then wandering around dungeons.

And while I'm not one to call almost anything impossible, a PS4 port of a 3DS game from a company that tends to keep series exclusive to specific ecosystems strikes me as being fairly unlikely. Switch port is marginally less unlikely, but even then, I'd bet very good money on SMT IV remaining exclusive to 3DS. A TON of work would need to be done to make that game workable on HD-capable single-screened systems. In general, the SMT team generally just makes new games as opposed to remaking old ones. SMT IV and IV: Apocalypse, for example, feature a number of callbacks to the SNES games. SMT V is definitely looking to be a sort of reimagining of Nocturne as well, while still possessing its own identity.

@ralphdibny The difference between a remaster, upgraded port, and remake can get pretty fuzzy at times anyway. Like Dragon Quest XI S, which needed to be rebuilt on a newer version of Unreal Engine, featured pretty significant changes to environments/shading/character geometry/etc. And certainly a number of older bespoke ports as well that have surfaced in the past.

Also, sometimes companies call games "remasters" when they're clearly remakes, like the Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter that much.

@Ralizah It's possible, I haven't gone far enough, and I probably won't, honestly, based on the primitive play. Cool environment and story, but those dungeons are a hard slog in 2021. Too boring an environment, for too long, with too many random encounters. Even the single floor Shibuya mall felt like a slot let lone real dungeons.

Yeah, I forgot IV got easier. It made too big an impression early by just being painfully overbearing in brutality. Poor balancing technically.

The other problem with SMT (and Persona, at least older Persona) is the game never really eases you into demon fusing, how it works, why it works. When I was new to the series I'd try to play most of the games without fusing anything because I really didn't understand the whole mechanic, it was expensive, and couln't figure out what or why you're doing what you're doing. Like Monolith games, they invent intricate systems and never really explain them properly at all, or let you learn by doing. Unlike monolith games, there's only really one complex system and it's the same between the games, so once you learn, you're okay. Monolith likes stacking infinite one-time throw-away excessivlely complicated systems at you and never explaining how they realistically work. I made it to the last quarter of XC2 before even understanding you were supposed to be fusing blades and creating HM slaves. Or how full bursts worked. Then I had to grind them all from scratch.

But yeah, the old school labyrinths, dead ends, teleports, backtracking, with one wall/floor texture for the entire dungeon which is all equally spaced width corridors.....I just can't sit through it. It's moderately addictive but I look at every other shiny pony as it goes by. It was really cool in the PS2 era, but it really just feels so....archaic now. I'd have loved a true remake instead of just an HD touch-up. More like they did with the EO games on 3DS.

IDK about the ports. Considering all the EO and SMT ports they produced in the 3DS era, I'm not sure the theme of sticking to one ecosystem applies anymore. Otherwise Devil Summoner would still be a Saturn game, EO on DS, etc. And they were re-selling DS games as full price 3DS games before Sony made it cool.

I'll make the exception that Devil Summoner somehow worked withe the old school dungeons. The tile-based, gridded, first person dungeon made that work, and the environments were actually more varied than Nocturne, with more "structure" to them.

@NEStalgia My favorite thing about SMT IV: Apocalypse is how well balanced it is. It starts really easy but gradually ratchets up the difficulty over time. It also has a wide range of difficulty settings so that players can choose a setting that doesn't overwhelm them. Personally, I was really satisfied with the "War" (hard) mode overall.

I'm not sure I really agree that demon fusion is particularly confusing, though. I never had an issue learning what I needed to do, and the modern games do tell you the basics of demon fusion. It's not comparable to the glut of convoluted systems in Xenoblade Chronicles in any way.

If Atlus didn't care about software exclusivity anymore, they'd be porting Persona 5 to everything imaginable. They won't, because keeping certain MegaTen series exclusive to Sony and Nintendo allows they maintain their good standing with both companies. They get some free advertising from Sony for Persona games, and Nintendo bends itself backwards in order to help Atlus drum up interest in new SMT games, and even partnered with them on Tokyo Mirage Sessions.

And yes, they ported a lot of stuff on 3DS because it was probably relatively simply to do and they could sell them as brand-new releases. A DS games going to 3DS requires infinitely less work than porting a DS or 3DS game to the Switch or PS4. Especially if the game in question was designed around the dual-screen set-up, as EO and (to a lesser degree) SMT IV/IV: Apocalypse were. If they're going to put in that much work, they're just going to make a new game.

@Ralizah I should have spent more time on Apocalypse. I never worked through it. By that point in 3DS, I had a backlog 3 feet high, and Switch was inbound and I kind of wasn't in a good spot to dig into it properly. It seemed fantastic though from what I did get to.

When you're new to SMT the fusion is confusing. Considering the idea of how you upgrade is so different from almost any other RPG other than Pokemon, but pretty different even from that, I really just didn't know what to do with it. And when you're new enough to not know your Zio from your Rakukaja - yeah it's pretty overwhelming. Agreed it's not even close to the convolution of XC. I love XC for the world, characters and story. I honestly kind of hate the series gameplay and generally unmanaged unintelligible systems. It's like a Naughty Dog game with giant numbers above everyone's heads, to me

Persona is an oddball. I don't know what the arrangement is with Sony but there's obviously something to that that there isn't with other series. Their other series have been ported between systems freely. Even oddball Catherine made it to other systems. SMT has been on every platform, even Xbox, if only briefly. Devil Summoner jumped at least from Sega to Nintendo if only once. Only Persona is perennially locked to one platform. And EO because it's so hopelessly tied to a single hardware gimmick not found on other platforms. Otherwise Atlus doesn't seem to have a problem with multiplats. Just Persona is bound to Sony by some sort of demon negotiation trick. Megaten isn't exclusive to Nintendo - PS4 got Nocturne. It was PS2 originally. It's really just Persona + Sony. And the spinoffs of it even go to Nintendo. Including the pseudo-sequel.

Also, Atlus ported a lot of stuff to 3DS, yes because it was easy, but also because they were bankrupt and collapsing and couldn't really make new games. This is Sega's Atlus division now, so the rules certainly have changed with that. Or should have. But.......P5.

@mookysam @Ralizah I thought it'd been all-but-confirmed that Wind Waker HD was coming to Switch at some point in the near future? Or am I making that up?

@RogerRoger Not that I've heard. And I'm pretty much on top of Nintendo news 24/7.

@NEStalgia I mean... you still have access to it, right? Just play Apocalypse one day when you have an SMT itch. It's an amazing game, even if the edgelord fanbase hates it because it dares to inject some light anime humor into the otherwise bleak setting. If SMT's core fanbase had its way, every game would be like Nocturne on steroids: plotless, creepy, filled-to-overflowing with dank caves and labyrinths where half the floor tiles either poison or teleport you, and occasional run ins with pale-faced weirdos who all too quickly start babbling about mass genocide, survival of the fittest, purifying the universe of consciousness, etc.

Newer SMT games describe what skills do. If someone can't read the skill description for Zio and connect the dots, I don't know what to say. Every RPG is going to have a learning curve of some sort, of course. I rather like that these games provide documentation, but otherwise don't foist hours of pointless tutorials on players.

Speaking from experience, I found Tokyo Mirage Sessions' battle system to be quite a bit more confusing than anything else I've ever encountered in a modern Atlus game.

PS4 got Nocturne because Nocturne was originally on PS2. And Nocturne went on PS2 because PS2 got virtually everything JRPG-related back then. Otherwise, Sony fans have missed out on Strange Journey, SMT IV, IV: Apocalypse, and soon will miss out on SMT V. Virtually every non-Persona-related Atlus property has been Nintendo exclusive since that gen as well: Trauma Center, the Devil Survivor games, the port of Soul Hackers, all of the Etrian Odyssey games, Radiant Historia, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, etc.

So I don't really mind that Playstation consoles get Persona games exclusively. Nintendo systems get virtually everything else. And Xbox consoles get...

...nothing. Hardcore M$ stans still insist Daddy Phil is going to get Persona on GamePass by airdropping suitcases full of cash at Sega HQ, but, in reality, Xbox doesn't even get pity ports of obscure side games and spinoffs anymore like the 360 did.

@Ralizah [salutes] Well, I'll erase that from my brain, then, as I trust you more than it. Cheers!

@RogerRoger I do fully expect it to come at some point, mind you. It'll sell at least a few million copies with minimal investment needed to get it running on the new system. They'd be foolish not to port it. People like to complain about the Wii U ports, but the Wii U ports sell well because almost nobody owned a Wii U in the first place.

You probably heard a rumor or "leak" or something. They're everywhere in Nintendo fan communities.

@Ralizah I'm not going to be done Nocturne by the time SMTV comes out and I still have to START P5R let alone Strikers! Apocalypse is going to be waiting a long time still. Assuming my 3DS's survive that long. This is why we need BC

From what we've seen of V, I'm kind of dreading the edgelord fan reaction to the new one. I don't think any game will be quite so grim and dark as the old Nocturne, Summoner, Survivor era. Even IV was a bit lighter than those.

I'm not a horror/creepy fan, but I have to admit the very X-Files feel of Nocturne is part of its charm. But it was also very 90's. It did creepy well, but it sure doesn't need to all be like that. But otherwise, LOL, yeah....that basically sounds like Nocturne and what the core fans would wish for

I don't think I've seen a persona/SMT game to date (maybe excluding P5? Haven't got there yet) that really DOES adequately explain the fusion system. It either tells you basically nothing (Nocturne) or it has so many page of eye-watering text that you just mash A/X to get through it and then ignore the feature anyway. Obviously once you've actually learned SMT it's no longer a problem for any SMT game, but for newcomers? It's still not done well. Certainly not Monolith-bad but not great.

You could be right about TMS#FE. I "got it" immediately, but I went into it already knowing a good deal about SMT and FE systems so it all just gelled for me and I can't get into the mind of a newcomer to it correctly. I loved that battle system. But...yeah, thinking about it, I guess it was pretty complicated.

And you could say "well PS2 got SMT2 because everything JRPG was on it and then missed out on other entries" but that's just it. It didn't miss out on all entries of SMT. Nintendo did miss out on all entries of Persona short of spinoffs. It's not like 3DS or Switch got P4G because the original was on Vita. I still assume there's some sort of arrangement regarding Persona, but not SMT.

Hah, I really don't get Atlus not porting to Xbox. Sega proper puts almost everything there, and even made PSO2 console exclusive. They did try it once so it's never impossible. I don't think Phil is plugging for Atlus games specifically. JRPGs? Yes, by the bucket. Atlus in particular? Prolly not. Falcom and Atlus are very firmly entrenched where they are. I do think XB will turn around JRPG support, but not from those two companies. Sega's in. Atlus division, not so much. If XB got all that I wouldn't really need a PS anymore. I'm not here for Drake and Alloy.

@Ralizah The poor, poor Wii U...

@NEStalgia I dunno, it sounds like you're not particularly enjoying Nocturne, so maybe let that one slide into the "might finish in the future" category?

BC with 3DS games wouldn't really be possible on any non-dual screen device, and 3DS is done with dual-screen devices for the foreseeable future, so I wouldn't hold my breath on that happening. 3DS is a design endpoint for a certain type of Nintendo hardware.

I dunno about IV being "lighter" than SMT games before it, tbh. Remember, SMT IV is the game where you can choose to ruthlessly murder opponents in a tournament in order to gain chaos alignment cred and, at one point, stumble across a warehouse full of humans who are being raised as livestock and having their brains harvested in order to make food for demons. And let's not forget about the supernatural death cult that keeps trying to convince you to destroy the world by causing a particle accelerator to malfunction and create a black hole.

I expect SMT V will be controversial to the "Nocturne über alles" crowd. We've seen enough to know this is probably not going to be a dungeon crawler, as Atlus instead seems to want to situate to-scale demons in large, open environments (literally the opposite of a dungeon crawler, lol). The Game Informer preview that talked about the characters hinted at the possibility that your characters will be able to go back and forth between reality and Da'at, which possibly opens the door to the high school setting being more prominent than in previous games. Your friends seem to be more heavily involved in the plot. Buffs have been changed to work like they do in Persona. And Nahobino seems to 'Naruto run' through environments.

If we're keeping score, PS1, Sega CD, and GBA also got ports of the first two SMT games. PS1 also got SMT If... Meanwhile, on the Persona side of things, I'm sure you know about Steam getting an exclusive HD remaster of Persona 4 Golden, but the first Persona game also released on Windows way back in the day.

I wasn't an SMT or FE newb when I started TMS on Wii U. The combat system is just more convoluted than in their other games. Part of the appeal of press turn combat is its satisfying simplicity. It's basically just Pokemon if the game rewarded you for playing well. Whereas TMS does this weird attack combo'ing thing when you hit enemy weaknesses. So you need to hit weaknesses, but also have allies who have particular skills so they can join in on Sessions combos... it's all a bit strange.

Microsoft really needs to aggressively pursue JRPG support like they did with the 360. Remember how that console had better exclusive JRPGs than the PS3? Granted, Microsoft is absolutely passively benefitting from Sony losing so much exclusive Japanese third party support (Yakuza and DQ on Xbox wasn't something I thought I'd be seeing when the eighth gen started), but there's still no incentive for someone like me to buy in like I did with the 360. Especially with Sony locking down as many games as possible via timed exclusivity deals (not that grimdark Devil May Cry FFXVI and "Dragon Quest for adults" are filling me with much hope).

Frankly, Microsoft has provided a ton of incentive for WRPG fans to buy into their ecosystem, but fans of Japanese games like myself still aren't feeling particularly drawn in. And, you know, maybe Microsoft learned from the way Japan violently rejected their advances that the Japanese market is a dead end for them and are focusing on becoming the pre-eminent platform for Western-developed games.

@RogerRoger Nintendo is Japan's richest company, I believe, but the boom or bust quality of their hardware sales somehow makes it where they perpetually feel like underdogs. It's always either:

"Oh yeah, I think one of my second cousins bought [insert unpopular console]. It doesn't get much use"
or
"ZOMG, I'm on my fifth [insert popular console]! I just have to own all of the color varieties!"

As a Wii U owner, I'm glad Nintendo came out on top again. Barely a year after it originally launched, I was able to buy what amounted to a perfect condition Wii U console for $200 directly from Nintendo, even though it retailed for $299.99. And they were apparently so desperate to get people to buy their games that, in order to incentivize purchases of Mario Kart 8, they allowed people who bought and registered the game within a couple of months of the game's launch to download a free digital Wii U game. And these weren't, like, cheap indie games. They gave me the option of New Super Mario Bros. U, Wind Waker HD, Pikmin 3, and... something else. But these were big, new Nintendo games, and they were just... giving them away.

@Ralizah yeah, nocturne is already in the "later" camp though it's addictive to play so every time I tell myself I'm done, that moves to another day... But still too much in the meantime. I'm not even done DQ11! And twewy 2 and AA next week ...

Haha, fair about 4... Idk, 5 sounds like it borrows much from persona and TMS. I'm cool with it but the 90s dungeon crawler obsessives are going to go full ePokemon Pro on it. It's not going to be pretty. It may bring about the end of this world. Maybe that's the actual game?

I absolutely adore TMS combat system. It's Press Turn meets One More cranked to 12. Better than SMT...

And PC doesn't count in the scores. PC gets GoW and HzD day one, too...

I do think MS is being aggressive on JRPGs, Spencer has highlighted that as a big priority over and over, and I do think they're doing that. Yakuza, dq11, octopath on, ff, kh on game pass weren't by accident. But it's slow going. And Sony is not only money hating the big names, bit clearly also influencing them to a point in not even sure I care about the franchises. New FF looks horrid and I don't think I want to see newDQ.

MS certainly is the WRPG king now. The problem is, thanks to Sony, so is square... . I'm not convinced the jrpg genre will be large enough to matter soon beyond small games like Bravely. Japan doesn't buy them anymore and westerners buy more if them if they're grimdark action games....

Fortunately I'm an RPG fan, both J and W, so I'll go where the love is. But if FF and DQ in Sonys evil sorting hat is what JRPGs look like, I think I'll be playing a lot less JRPGs.

Kinda have to hope Phil has the magic sauce for Japanese games on Xbox. Otherwise on team blue it looks like we'll just be getting naughty dog games with subtitles.

@NEStalgia cheers for the detailed responses. It certainly sounds intense! I think that based on my friends obsession with Persona at least, it's probably not a series I could get into any time soon because of the time obligations.

It certainly sounds interesting though and I do love a series with both a complicated series of events and a complicated method of play across different platforms (such as MGS 😅).

I think both you and Ralizah have at least convinced me to give it a look in when I get some time!!

@Ralizah I never even considered an upgraded port 😅. I suppose the VC and NSO apps fall into that in some respects.

I heard when DQ11S was ported to platforms other than the Switch that it featured Switch level graphics so it was worth keeping the original DQ11 about for those other platforms as it looked better. I could be wrong about that as I have no first hand experience with it!!

I know that demake is a relatively new term but I feel like it could be used retroactively to accurately describe those kind of handheld ports of AAA games from back in the day. Stuff that was named the same on GBA as it was on PS2 despite being completely different games like Splinter Cell and Tony Hawk's

@NEStalgia It doesn't help that out of combat the sword does follow your movements, albeit with a slight delay.

Playing the Zelda mini game in Nintendo Land was a delight after SS, that games does have 1-to-1 combat, and though it looks incredibly stupid, it feels good to play.

@Ralizah It does feel like Nintendo alternates success and failure with each passing console generation, but I suppose that's the price of innovation. Sometimes, your bold new idea isn't gonna work, or it's gonna be way ahead of its time, but I respect that kind of risk-taking far more than bland predictability.

That's a crazy story about your Wii U experience! Especially considering Switch launch games are still being sold at full price today, over four years after release, and yet are also still charting each week.