Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@LtSarge You still get gold coins from vouchers, yes.

Vouchers also completely nullify price hikes on certain games. I bought TotK with a voucher, so the game cost me $20 less than it would have at MSRP.

@Ralizah Good stuff!

That's very convenient! There really are many benefits with the vouchers and getting Nintendo titles digitally. I'll probably go for it next month when the new Mario Party comes out.

Nintendo finally dropped news on new hardware!

It's a $100 alarm clock.

@Ralizah oh nice timing, I was gonna acquire a few of the regulars of this about a tiny tiny matter that’s occupying my mind at the given moment.

Found a Zelda themed Switch OLED. It’s 94 Kuwaiti Dinar (300 USD), which is already a decent price, however there’s an even better thing; I can get at a much much lower price if I get at a specific point, it’s complicated to explain but I can get it like… 60 KD (200 USD) most? Probably even 40 KD (120 USD) if I’m lucky. Killer deal, yeah? So sweet it’s giving my sweet tooth a run for its money.

One problem, kinda premature yeah? I mean, Switch 2 may or may not have an OLED but… it’s still not likely very far. Is it too late to upgrade? Is the OLED not worth it at this point? Is it better to wait? So many questions!

@Yousef- The successor is probably dropping next year, yeah, but whether it's "too late to upgrade" depends on your plans. I'd say if you can get it for a good price ($200 USD is a VERY good price for an OLED), and you plan to wait on a bit for the new hardware, it's a worthy upgrade. Especially if you're still rocking the original model. The battery life, improved screen, sound, and feel in general was worth the upgrade for me. It's very comparable to Steam Deck OLED in that respect (no surprise, since Valve modeled their revision after this).

I imagine you can also sell it off to help fund the Switch 2 once you decide to upgrade.

But if you don't play your Switch very often and/or want to get the successor ASAP, then probably not worth the hassle, yeah? Especially if it's backwards-compatible, which it probably will be.

It's not too late, but I do think it depends on your priorities.

Very helpful, much obliged!

I feel like there could be some very creative scenes used for Alarmo. Like the Zelda one with "Wake up Link" is perfect. Another would be from Sonic. This track would easily wake me up:

It would also stress the hell out of me every morning lol.

@LtSarge Yeah, no thanks, I don't want to experience a state of abject anxiety every day due to my alarm clock. That's what the rest of the morning is for.

So I've played Fire Emblem Awakening for about 10 hours now and I can easily say that this is the most enjoyable Fire Emblem game I've experienced thus far. I don't have to get frustrated if a character dies and I have to restart a chapter all the way from the beginning, thus resulting in up to an hour of lost progress. I don't have to worry either about constantly creating save states like I did when I played some of the games on the Wii U. Not to mention it's easy to grind now, which opens up opportunities to experiment with other characters that you may think are weak but then become really strong the more you use them (like Donnel).

Also, this game has introduced what is in my opinion the most interesting and game-changing mechanic of the series at that point, which is pairing up. This makes it easier to level up weaker units as you can pair them with stronger ones. Not to mention it's more doable to defeat strong bosses as you can pair up two strong units to make them even stronger.

Skills is also a really cool addition to the series as some can be incredibly helpful for certain characters, like being able to heal 5 HP more with Lissa.

But the most important part for me is that the difficulty (I'm playing on Normal) is just about right. It's not too challenging and not too easy, which has made my playthrough of the game incredibly enjoyable. I'm seriously loving this game so far, it's just pure bliss. If it's like this the whole way through, then it might become my favourite game in the series thus far.

March 20, 2025 release date. Switch 1 has all Xenoblades now!

I wonder how this will affect the Switch 2 reveal and release?

@Herculean I wholeheartedly agree. At first when I watched the trailer, I thought this was such a stupid idea as they should just put their soundtrack on Spotify like everyone else. But then it said that the music app is included with Switch Online and that's when they sold me.

I'm using it now and it's so awesome to finally be able to listen to Nintendo music on the phone. Coincidentally, I've recently started listening to gaming music on Spotify on my phone while I'm out and about. I was just thinking how I would've liked to listen to Nintendo music as well and now I can. It's so cool, not to mention it makes having a subscription to Switch Online more worth it now. Good job Nintendo!

I know this probably isn't the best place for this, but I've been having a ton of fun with the Pokemon TCG mobile app, and I don't typically play F2P mobile gacha games.

I've only been playing it for a few days and haven't spent any money, but it seems a lot more generous at giving you rarer/better draws than the other gacha games I've tried in the past. I already have 30 different Holographic cards, including the featured pulls of each banner (EX variants of Charizard, Pikachu, & Mewtwo).

As for actual Switch talk, I completed Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom last weekend. I thought Nintendo was having a pretty meh year so far (as a newcomer to it, I was even a bit disappointed by TTYD), but Zelda really turned things around and was a real delight.

Went back to Trails of Cold Steel 4 on the Switch. Frame drops ABOUND but it’s the Switch after all. Just thought it started off alright after the genuinely good Cold Steel 3 but then after Act 1 the lesbian rape jokes were back and now there’s a f*cking catgirl.

@Herculean @Bob_Salat Ocarina is timeless (pardon the pun, I couldn't think of a better word). The simple, yet elegant design is on point. It's amazingly constructed for a game of the era, which I think is helped by how free from fluff and jank it is.

@nessisonett Is that drunk-Phil era? He's not wearing his beanie. Pretty shocking how the Trails series became infested with that crap (although Xenoblade 2 was pretty bad). Incest aside, the Sky games were generally free of it, weren't they? I didn't like the harem in the first Cold Steel.

@mookysam The Sky games are more sort of classic anime in the art style and the lack of harem. There were occasional slips, Schera is well-written but still reduced to her body too often and the writers still have that weird rapey lesbian stereotype in there, but they’re far less dodgy than Cold Steel. I know that they move with the times and the 2010s were rife with fanservice becoming glossier and more mainstream but Cold Steel often feels like they were written by 12 year olds. It’s a shame, there’s great games underneath it.

From the outside looking in, the Cold Steel games just look like 00's-era ecchi rubbish from the character designs alone.

Maybe Ys gets weird at some point, but I - III and VIII sure don't, aside from, like, one scene at a hot spring.

Picked up Xenoblade 3 in the sale. Sorta don't know how I feel about it, played like three hours. Story and world right now feels extremely bland JRPG fluff, but its opening out so I'll give it more time. As a game, it seems to have learnt from the first Xenoblade because I'm not even at a point where I can manually switch characters yet, which has made the introduction to combat feel like way less of a clustereff as I remember the OG being. Maybe it is me who has changed though and I'll go back and like that game. Or maybe as 3 introduces more mechanics, which opens the door for more messiness, maybe I will like the combat less here.

@Pizzamorg give it time. While I do think 3 is the weakest of the bunch, it’s still a strong title in the series. The side quests and characters you encounter feel more meaningful and are rewarding in their completion, you’ll probably enjoy that aspect of the game. Story of course hits in a few ways, despite what I thought was one littered with poorly done cinematic intervals, but the writing and character bonds deepening are thoughtful and touching. I do think it’s an overrated game (sorry, I’m probably not doing a good job hyping, just being honest), but it delivers on a couple fronts with exceptional prowess. The music speaks for itself as you play I imagine keep going, you might be pleasantly surprised after more progress, there’s a lot to enjoy yet.

Aside from a slow-ish start, Xenoblade 3 is the best JRPG I've ever played, and it's not even close. Super excited to see what Monolith does in the future, as the evolution in quality from XC1 to XC3 is honestly insane.

I'm like six hours in now. The opening has been excruciatingly slow and hand holdy, but it is probably a necessarily evil as its throwing so much at you, that if you had more time to embed certain things the tutorial would be longer than most games.

I now have a full party (I think?) and yeah, combat has descended into a complete mess like I remember from previous games. There are like 40 rings and 80 lines, everyone is running in circles dropping abilities every two seconds and I'm not sure how any person is meant to manage this tactically. Like it feels like there should be the option to pause the combat or something and queue orders, but you can't, you can now switch characters mid combat which I don't believe was possible before, but its just a frantic mess as you desperately try and cycle from one person to another and micromanage everything.

It feels so bad, I can't imagine this is the intended way to play. But if that isn't the function of why the character swapping exists. I can't really work out what the other reason would be. As far as I can tell you can't stop the AI from using abilities, so even if you set up some insane six person combo that required every Art to be used in a perfect sequence, the AI is going to mess that up.

Combat has so far been at its best for me when I've basically just ignored like 90 percent of it and defaulting to whoever is easiest to control. If we get outnumbered generally we get absolutely melted, so I guess that hints to the AI doing a poor job, but I dunno what the answer is. Maybe I should be picking one of the healing units and just controlling them specifically and babysitting my team.