Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

So, a few of Nintendo's games get... well, pretty much the game equivalent of an anime theme song. Well, the English version of the Fire Emblem Engage opening leaked, and... uh...

It's 100% cringe, but I... kinda like it? Reminds me of when I was a kid and watching the butchered 4Kids dub of an anime, complete with an entirely altered English-language theme.

@Ralizah I never got into anime anywhere near as much as a lot of people, so I can safely say I don't like the song. Still, if I ever played the game, I know it would eventually get stuck in my head whether I like it or not. I guess it at least somewhat accomplishes what it is intended to then.

@KilloWertz I'm playing Shadows of Valentia right now, and the tone couldn't be more different, even down to the opening movie, lol.

Fire Emblem is such a weird series, since new entries keep oscillating between anime cringe and tragedy-ridden dark-ish fantasy narratives.

The next game in the series is supposedly a remake of Genealogy of the Holy War, which is a sweeping and (for the series) fairly grounded war epic, so it seems like this process is going to continue!

@Ralizah And that is an opening I can get behind. That was actually really good, and impressive looking for a 3DS game. I obviously also liked the opening for Three Houses even though I only played it for about 15 hours.

I don't mind the actual intro for Engage. I just don't like the song, but like I said before, it'd probably still get stuck in my head regardless. The alternating tone for the series is pretty weird though.

Played Kirby's Dream Buffet with a couple of friends tonight. It's honestly a very fun game! It's like Nintendo's own version of Fall Guys and it's really good. For a tenner, it's certainly worth the money. Definitely going to keep playing this with my friends from here on out. Be warned though, don't play this game without some snacks since it's really easy to get hungry after you start playing it lol.

We also played some of the Kirby 64 mini-games and one of them was like Bomberman, which was surprisingly really fun. We played it for like half an hour lol. Really addicting.

@Ralizah It would make my heart explode if they cringeified Genealogy. It would suit an 80s anime style á la Legend of the Galactic Heroes but modern Japanese gaming seems obsessed with shoehorning the exact same anime art style into every series when anime is an incredibly diverse medium. I’m not expecting a game to look like Belladonna of Sadness or something, but less of this hyper-clean beige art style would be great.

@nessisonett I mean, it's the same with all mediums, right? Certain aesthetic styles or approaches become popular and permeate the landscape for a period. Most Western animation on TV has the horrifying thin line, low-detail animation style. Pretty much all animated movies out of the West, with a few rare exception, have that generic Pixar/Dreamworks look now. The same logic applies to video games as well, with many, many games looking similar to other games.

In the case of Fire Emblem 4, they could go for a well-known illustrator with a unique style like they did with Echoes, which has some of the loveliest character portrait art in the series. A hybrid modern/retro style like in the new Urusei Yatsura anime would be cool as well.

I just... don't know how they're going to do Genealogy's gameplay flow justice, given those humongous maps aren't as impressive now as they were back in the day. They need to be able to convey an immense sense of scale to do the project justice.

@Ralizah Now I’ve got the Dreamworks Smirk on my mind!

In all seriousness, I don’t think Genealogy would survive a port unscathed gameplay wise, it’ll be cut to ribbons so that it’s in much more manageable chunks as that suits the audience that they’ve cultivated since Awakening. There’ll always be the original and the fan translation is brilliant but it really would be nice for the game to be taken to a modern standard while maintaining its unique charms. For me, the massive maps make it feel almost like a tabletop wargame, with individual skirmish areas set around a map and smaller objectives leading to a main goal giving it a much more military feel. The ‘horrors of war’ angle would probably survive intact in a Genealogy remake compared to Three Houses which undermines its own seriousness at least. I do think that a 3D engine could make the maps feel appropriately impressive though, perspective in the original flattens the more vertical maps. Echoes really is underrated given how well it manages that exact task, the game is modern enough while still being quintessentially classic Fire Emblem.

@WanderingBullet It's the Switch Pro

Actually, I have hardly touched my Switch since finding Marvel Snap. It's terrible, I know, but it does make clear that the Switch is more a competitor to mobile gaming for me than to console gaming.

@Kidfried I don't understand why I can't stop playing the damn game.

Especially now I don't really go anywhere, the Switch is definitely more of a novelty to me than anything else. Something that lets me squeeze in an extra hour of gaming or so, because I can use it in bed. I use my Switch for exclusives, and it does get a lot of use over the Holidays as my family live abroad and I tend to take it with me to get me through flights etc, but if it is a new multiplat title (not like some HD update of an old title), I'd never consider it on Switch over say PC or PS5. Of all the game playing devices I own, the Switch ends up being my most dormant one in a year, as I can quite easily go months without ever needing to even think about it.

Seems I am not the only one that does not like the Switch that much. I have an OG Switch and oh my God it has the build quality of a cheap toy. It rattles, it gave me cramps almost instantly, the cons started drifting and the unit randomly did not charge. Nintendo said that I broke it myself and asked money for the repair, so I threw it away and got a Lite that was slightly better. I don't believe that my OG Gameboy that I have from 1989 still works and I use it from time to time but the Switch lasted 2 years.

The serious problem is the games. Even though I have some Nintendo consoles, except Pokémon, I mostly played third party games and I only have nostalgia for Gameboy games. Therefore, the Switch has no games for me, I simply do not find first party Nintendo games appealing. The only first party games I have are Link's Awakening and Pokémon Shield. The other games I played are indies.

After I got the Steam Deck, that is leagues ahead from both the Switch and the Vita, both handhelds ended in the closet.

@belmont The Switch has the most amount of compelling games for me out of the three current consoles right now but for some reason, I just don't feel like playing on the Switch. I have the same issue with the 3DS, there are so many great games in my backlog but I just don't feel like playing on the 3DS. There's something about Nintendo's systems, I just don't know what. I mean, I have fewer games in my Vita backlog but I'd still rather pull out my Vita and play anything on it. I'd even buy a game that's on Switch on PS4 instead and play it on my Vita through Remote Play.

If someone has any tips on how I can motivate myself to play more on my Nintendo systems, I'd love to hear it lol. I've actually been craving some Mario & Luigi (which is sadly absent on the Switch) so I've been thinking about starting up Bowser's Inside Story on 3DS.

See I'm the opposite. I have a nice chunky PS5 and Xbox Series S by my TV and...they don't get used much. I think last year I clocked 25 hours on my PS5. Same with Steam though, and the Xbox.

Granted, Switch wasn't much higher, only around 300 hours across the year, but a lot of that is because I don't have to make myself sit down and play it.

Different strokes I guess. Reminds me I need to dust the PS5.

Switch still gets most of my attention vs my PS4, PC, Wii U, etc. I've been trying to consciously use those devices a bit more as of late, since they do have games I want to play on them, but the Switch is such a comfortable, convenient system to play on that I usually just end up reaching for it anyway. I don't have to carve out time to sit in front of a TV for an hour or two. I don't have to worry about power outages. And, especially with the OLED model, games look and sound so much better than on my older handhelds.

The hybrid model really just exposed for me how limiting other devices were. Can only play on the TV. Can only play on a tiny screen with terrible speakers. I struggle going back to those limitations.

My problem is that I think I like Nintendo games more than I actually do. I bought Pokémon Scarlet and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening recently and have barely touched them. I used to own loads of Nintendo’s Switch games and with the exception of Luigi’s Mansion 3 and Super Mario Odyssey, I never finished any of them.

The big mistake I made is I didn't know if I liked Nintendo first party, but wanted to find out if I did. However, I should have done more research in advance, I think. I had gotten so used to having access to a full library of stuff across basically every console, and Nintendo is my biggest blind spot, so I kinda assumed that it'd be even better on Switch, as there are like two plus decades worth of titles I've been told for years were incredible but I'd never played. Then I get the Switch and realise that actually Nintendo don't really make any of their first party stuff from past generations readily available, unless they plan to do a rerelease at full price, so I'm still as mostly cut off from those two decades or so of games as I was before I got the Switch. I did get access to the Switch first party stuff, but there was certainly less of it than I expected. And I kinda get it I guess because their novelty factor for their consoles and handhelds probably makes it more complicated to port titles across than it does to say play PS2 games on your PS5, but still, Nintendo make almost zero effort to preserve their history and make it accessible to new players and that sucks. They are the only one of the three that doesn't have a back catalogue subscription service, and they are the one I want to have one the most.

@Pizzamorg They do have a back catalog subscription service, but much like with Xbox, which ended it's catalog last year, there is a finite number of games that are possible to bring over.

As for the PS5s back catalog....err...you CAN play PS2 games on your PS5 but it seems like they'll never add any more now.