Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@Ralizah You didn't clearly state which game you're referring to in your post, but I'm guessing it's Metroid Prime 4.

I feel like I'd be of the same opinion as you based on what I've read about the game. It's a good game but nothing special. I think when you make a sequel for a popular series that's been dormant for a long time, the expectations will be sky high. Especially when considering how long ago it was since the game was announced and back then, it was a different game before development was restarted on the project. It would be interesting to see what the first version of the game was going to be. I vaguely recall it was going to be more of a horror game, which would've been interesting!

@LtSarge Woops! That's what I get for copypasting a post I made in the NL MP4 thread. 😛 Edited the post.

Yeah, I know a number of people who are of the opinion that nothing short of a generational masterpiece would've satisfied the fanbase, which I agree with. Expectations were too built up for this.

The game definitely has a horror vibe in parts! There's one area that almost makes you feel like you're The Thing or a similar sci-fi horror story. Fantastic tone.

Part of the irritation for me is the older Prime games also have a lot of flaws, but people often have different standards for newer software.

@LtSarge Haha, I'm not sure how I'll react to flipping back and forth between very different eras of gaming within the series. I figure by the time I'd have completed the first and second remake, there might already be a next one out anyway! I'm still going to have that type of experience making my way through Star Ocean, where I'll have to jump from a PSP-era remake to a current-day remake to a straight-up PlayStation 2 game. I'm sure it's going to give me whiplash as this series might eventually, but I think I'll be able to do deal with it okay. Famous last words!

@Ralizah Ah, that's cool that MP4 also has horror themes! Speaking of older MP titles and horror, I played through MP2 last year, which is apparently a lot of people's favourite MP title. I had no idea people were of that opinion about the game, as I've mostly heard praise about MP1 before I played MP2, but suddenly after I finished MP2, I saw tons of praise for the game.

But it's like you say, even though there's a lot of praise for the older titles, there are still a lot of flaws. In the case of MP2, there's just so much backtracking and switching back and forth between the light and dark dimensions. Not to mention having to switch at specific spots in order to get to your destination. You could say that this is the most "Metroidvania" Metroid Prime game, but it was still a bit extreme in that regard. I enjoyed the game regardless though, it was really fun.

My favourite is probably MP3, but that's mostly due to bias as it was the first game in the trilogy that I played since it was the only one available on Wii (before the trilogy bundle came out).

@Tjuz That's another series I've really wanted to get into and where I have multiple games, but I haven't played any of them! Luckily, the entire series can be played on PS5 so I'm in no rush to get through these games. But I'm definitely looking forward to playing the first remake one of these days.

So I bought Pokémon LeafGreen on Switch yesterday. I've been craving old school Pokémon for weeks now, which is why I was so excited when they announced that FR/LG would be coming to Switch. The older Pokémon games are perfect to play when I just want to zone out as I'm well-versed with the franchise that I don't need to be attentive all the time throughout my playthroughs.

Decided to go with Squirtle as my starter since I feel like most people (including me) choose Charmander, so I wanted to go with someone else this time. The problem with the older gens is that even though there are a lot of good Pokémon, most of them don't learn any or a lot of good moves. I mean, if I just level up Blastoise normally, it'll only have Water Gun and Hydro Pump, which suck. Thankfully, you get Water Pulse after the second gym and then Surf in the Safari Zone. Another example is Growlithe, which only learns Flame Wheel, while Vulpix learns Flamethrower. So that's one reason why I picked LeafGreen, just to get Vulpix.

I also learned that the Switch versions have the event stuff unlocked, i.e. Ho-Oh/Lugia and Deoxys, which is super cool! I seriously hope they release Emerald next and have all the events unlocked there as well, as that game had tons of event Pokémon. That'd give me more reason to keep playing the game after beating the Pokémon League as I never did the event stuff as a kid.

Also, it would be cool if Game Freak decided to release a new Pokémon game with the aesthetics and structure of the old school games. I mean, these games are just much more fun than the newer ones due to their simplicity.

Nintendo updated the Switch 2 with an optional boost mode feature for Switch 1 games. Basically, you can play Switch 1 games on the tablet as if they were running in docked mode. Not everything hits 1080p (because a LOT of docked Switch 1 games didn't hit that resolution goal), but it does help pretty tremendously with image quality in a few games.

The Xenoblades, in particular, look great now. XC2 can finally be played undocked without the experience suffering.

Same day as the PSSR 2.0 rollout. Sony and Nintendo fans had a good day yesterday lol

@Ralizah I had no clue Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has been known to have such issues with handheld mode on the Switch. I played the first one entirely in handheld mode, and now to suddenly hear how poor the second one is in that particular way of playing... it scares me! I definitely prefer handheld mode when it comes to the Switch, so I hope it's either not as bad as people say or that it doesn't bother me personally as much. Sadly, I don't have a Switch 2 to fix it if that's not the case! Does the third game have similar issues with handheld mode? If not, with it being less graphically advanced, what makes the second one so horrible in comparison?

@Tjuz It's pretty much the early poster child for games that struggled to run well undocked. The resolution range is similar to the XCDE they shipped later that you played, but in certain demanding areas it tended to hover around the very low end of that range, and with an ugly sharpening filter also highlighting the resolution woes.

Both games looked even worse undocked on the higher-res Switch 2 screen until this update got them running at 720p undocked on the console, which, while still nowhere near native res for the screen, at least made them look presentable.

The DLC campaign for XC2 (which is incredible, by the way, and pretty much a complete 20+ hour JRPG in its own right) improved on the base game and ran... pretty much like XCDE did. Not great, but also not disastrously when undocked.

Xenoblade 3 has always looked incredible, both docked and undocked. It has an upscaler that nicely bumps up the resolution, so undocked on Switch 2 it's running at a cleanly upscaled 1080p and looks VERY sharp as a result.

You can make your own judgments, of course. Some people claim to have never had an issue with XC2 undocked, but that's... difficult for me to believe, even fully accepting the limitations of the hardware.

DF did a pretty good video talking a bit about the issue at the time. It should start at the part of the video where they talk about this.

So I begun using my switch again after my friend convinced me to binge the entire xenoblade franchise, which I already bought years ago and I had no real use for my switch besides that so might as well.

Here’s my FC if anyone wanna add me: SW-7391-1388-5607

@Ralizah My god, that Digital Foundry video you linked is a straight-up horror show. I can't believe they shipped it like that and never did anything to fix it! Crazy that they managed to get Xenoblade Chronicles 3 running perfectly fine, but messed this one up that bad. I guess it comes with the territory of the second being very early on in the life cycle of the Switch. With it being one of their hallmark franchises though, I'd expect them to at least go back and clean it up a bit afterwards. Real shame they didn't bother. I'm gonna hope I'll be one of those people who manage to delude themselves into thinking there was never any issues, or I'm going to have to play it docked against my will. Either way, I'm sure the journey will be worth it, even if this has put a little bit of a damper on my excitement for getting into it.

As for Torna, I've only heard great things indeed. I debated getting the physical release of it alongside my purchase of the main game, but I would prefer for the expansion to be inside the main game rather than being a separate entity on the main screen. Irrelevant, yes, but my unreasonable brain would be unhappy with a DLC taking up a whole slot. I'm sure I'll start my adventure with this package sooner rather than later!

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@Yousef- Ah! You have a cute, pink Switch lite as well. I mostly game on the regular black version, as my roommate prefers the smaller size of the lite... but it's so cute. Happy to hear you're giving the Xenoblade games a shot as well! I was very, very pleasantly surprised last year when I started my journey. I hope you'll feel the same way!

@Tjuz Yeah, it's a weird stain on Monolith's otherwise sterling record of making Nintendo's frankly puny consoles sing. Xenoblade X was probably the most visually impressive Wii U game. Ditto with Xenoblade 3 and Switch, which looks closer to a AA PS4 game to me.

The impression I've always had is that Monolith is a console developer, and they approached their Switch era games by targeting the docked spec. They just didn't have the software tools at the time for this not to end up nerfing portable mode hard.

What you could always do is start portable and just shift to TV when it starts looking bad to you. I remember starting the game in portable mode and thinking: "This doesn't look all that bad. I don't know why people were crying." Because, until you hit your first big open area environment, it looks... okay. Like Xenoblade DE undocked. And when you go back to different, smaller areas, it looks fine. It's those giant, sweeping environments that send the resolution spiraling down.

It tells you something when the game has as many annoyances as it does, and a lot of us still remember the game incredibly fondly (and, for whatever reason, I believe it's still the best-selling entry in the series). The experience is very much worth having, and it's still one of the highlights of the Switch's launch year for me.

But yeah, until it gets a proper next gen patch, boosted portable play on Switch 2 is THE way to experience Xenoblade 2 atm. Which is kind of a wild turn of events, and has me seriously considering going through the game again.

@Tjuz yes! It is very cute indeed, the pics don’t do it justice!

One funny thing I found out is that all armor doubles as cosmetics too and they show up in cutscenes also!

I’m liking this very much, it’s really reminding me of Persona, which I love.