Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

So I went from saying “hey I need a little break from Xenoblade 2 cause it has so many design choices that really piss me off” to replaying about 30 hours of Fire Emblem Engage lol I honestly dunno if I am gonna even go back and finish Xenoblade 2 to be honest. The story, combat etc all great, but they just made that game borderline unplayable in every other aspect.

In terms of Engage, I didn’t love Fire Emblem Engage when I played it the first time, but still played like 70 hours of it anyway and rolled credits. Now replaying it fresh off of Xenoblade 2 and its massive pile of frustrations, honestly makes Engage feel like such a treat. Engage is designed almost in the opposite way of Xenoblade 2, in that every creative decision in Engage seems to be focused on making Engage as playable as possible, even if that may result in certain systems feeling a little shallow or basic.

I sorta forgot too how nice it looks for a Switch game, all the details in the animations make watching fights play out fun always, they can really make a fight between two units look like a choreographed cutscene somehow, and its a shame that whatever tech they used to bring that to a reality is probably going to be lost, as I don’t think Engage was particularly well received or sold well, and seems to have largely been forgotten. Swapping classes is a lot of fun, especially when you completely transform the role a unit may have previously filled. I also appreciate how out there some of Fire Emblem’s classes can be, and I’d argue this game doesn’t even have some of the weirdest ones. Plus, while Engage is pretty easy, there is something weirdly satisfying about a unit just absolutely going on a rampage as it takes on Unit after Unit, dodging, parrying and cutting them down. It is here where little animations really shine too, like how a dodge can be animated in lots of ways, like knocking a projectile out of the air, or doing a slick cut behind the person or whatever. Just always looks so cool.

Switch 2’s reference model leaking is interesting. Magnetic joy-cons are a great idea. It does seem slightly too similar but the changes could be on the software side and we pretty much know the internal gubbins by now and that’ll be a big improvement. Bizarre for a console to leak this badly without even being revealed.

@nessisonett apparently it will have hall effect joysticks.

@jdv95 Would definitely be welcome. The drift on the joy-cons is a nightmare, I’ve gone through two pairs and a couple sticks I’ve replaced.

@nessisonett honestly it could look the exact same and I wouldn’t care as long as the specs were a significant improvement

Joycons need better sticks and to be rounded on the bottoms. Literally nobody I know does the 'pop a joycon off to use it as a separate controller' thing.

@Pizzamorg I really enjoyed FE Engage. The writing can be a bit moronic, but I loved the gameplay, vibrant use of color (especially on the SWOLED), detailed character animations, etc.

The biggest downside for me is that skirmishes are borderline broken. They just spam you with enemies. They're far harder than any of the story maps and feel totally unbalanced.

Yeah @Ralizah I remember nothing about the story from my first play through, and a replay has not been good in that regard lol.

Again though, I feel like context matters. Xenoblade 2 loved doing this thing where it would make you watch a really lengthy cutscene, and then you’d walk two steps and then be throw right back into another one. Feels almost like it doesn’t belong on a Switch for that reason.

Because of that, I kinda appreciate that every new map in Engage tries to answer: who this new ally is, where we are, who the enemy is, who were a fighting in like six sentences spread out on either end of the battle and then they get you out of there.

I think more problematic are the Bonds / Supports. I’ve now played a few of the older games, and so I now know that isn’t as Engage exclusive problem in having support conversations that are about three words (not sentences, words) long and say nothing. But I dunno, there is still somehow something worse about how Engage does these, even if they aren’t a unique problem. Like most of the Units in Engage are barely even characters, and it’s weird how many Units have the same one note interests. Like there are like five Units whose only personality trait is having or wants to have muscles. Like was this written by AI or something?

And yeah the missions that power up the Emblems are a really sharp difficulty jump. Skirmishes are kind of more of a mixed bag for me so far. Again, not an Engage unique problem I now know from playing older games, but Fire Emblem’s AI design of having the CPU gun straight for the weakest link even when it doesn’t make a lot of sense a lot of the time to do that makes skirmishes kinda frustrating (especially if you play on the perma death mode) because respecing units, or even dragging new units up to the levels of everyone else can sorta feel impossible at times.

I also sorta don’t understand how XP really works, cause it kinda feels like if you respec a unit back into a base class to send them in a new direction for an advanced class, this means them extremely weak and fragile on the field, but they seem to still get the same amount of XP as any unit. You’d think if you had one of these get the killing blow on an advanced unit you’d get like multiple levels at once, but it doesn’t work that way.

This means that I have this huge roster of units, and use like four of them regularly, because its more frustrating than fun to drag new units up to their level, when the four of them can just clear entire maps on their own just with retaliation damage.

I really struggled with Engage at first because it's basically the polar opposite of Three Houses - whereas the latter excels in storytelling, character development, and in all of the side/RPG content associated with the monastery, the former has a nothing story, bland characters, and most of the stuff in the somniel just isn't worth bothering with.

That said, I began to appreciate Engage more when I focused on its core strength which is the core tactical gameplay (combined with the Engage gimmick).

NGL, reading about it here makes me tempted to revisit it over the Christmas break. Shouldn't be too time consuming considering I have no interest in revisiting the story/dialogue.

I'm with @Ralizah though, screw those skirmishes. How am I meant to use them for level grinding if they're 10x more difficult than the story?

@Buizel FR. The way the game is balanced makes it the only Fire Emblem game I'm considering doing the ultra hard difficulty on.

I went in expecting Awakening 2, but without the infuriating stupidity of Fates, and basically got that, so I was happy. I know some people hate the character designs, but I love the v-tuber style of it, lol.

@Pizzamorg Reclassing works fine if you synergize what classes and skills you're combining. And yeah, it's all too simple to use certain combinations of skills and emblems to turn certain characters into unstoppable killing machines. Which means they end up absorbing a lot of excess EXP unless you're deliberately using them less.

@Ralizah Funny to see you discussing Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as I just started my own journey with the first entry! Still early days as I've just reached the Bionis' Leg refugee camp, but I'm liking what I'm playing so far. I'm surprised to hear the criticism regarding the quest markers and minimap routes, as in my experience, the first one does a pretty good job of that. Plenty to criticise about the insane amount of side quests present, but it's weird to hear that the sequel is somehow worse at actually tracking where you need to be for everything.

At first, I was pretty overwhelmed with the amount of quests and named NPCs, but as I play more and the town relationships are coming to more of a forefront, I'm actually really liking the system. I can't think of any other game I played that really got into the nitty gritty of the relationships between NPCs who are basically just quest givers, and the way they present that on the Affinity chart and everything is actually quite cool.

If I had any big criticism thus far, it'd be that the walking speed is exhausting for the large amounts of distance they expect you to cover. When I saw the buggy on the Bionis' Leg, I was delighted to think for a second that they would introduce a vehicle to cover these vast distances with... but alas. I have noticed the random high-level enemies popping up in low-level areas in the first game as well, but it's just a few here and there. It sounds like it gets a lot worse with that in the sequel.

I do like the combat, but it comes across like it's very dependent on RNG. I had quest where I needed to kill some dragon-like creature in the Colony 9 area which was the same level I was at that point (level 18), and I almost killed it on my first go. Reload and retry, now I suddenly couldn't get past half health on the *****. Half an hour of trial and error later, the amount of health I was able to pick off of this enemy before he killed me varied wildly each time. In the end, I did manage to finish him off, but only just. Seems like the AI is just all over the place in how it reacts to an enemy or how the enemy approaches you, which in turn seems to have a large effect on if you can kill that enemy with ease or not in your one go. Not sure I'm a fan of that.

Definitely excited to play more though, and as I'm seemingly overleveled for the most part I hope it won't be much of an issue. Not gonna be happy if the same issue persists between games where suddenly the bosses are a huge difficulty spike, though! So far, so good...

All these Switch 2 reveals and yet Nintendo is seemingly doing nothing (Not even sending out the legendary takedown ninjas) is kinda wild. The fact they haven't announced anything seeing as it's already been leaked everywhere is crazy!

I've actually been waiting for the Switch 2 release so I can finally jump back in on a Nintendo platform since the Wii & 2DS.

@Tjuz Xenoblade Chronicles 2 gets a lot of grief for its poor map, which I believe they improved with patches actually, but it is still a little difficult to work out where you’re going.

But, I had a lot more success with often ignoring the map a little and actually LOOKING (!) at where I should be going. If you stand still and look around, sometimes combined with the map, you can often visually route your path across the vertical environments quite successfully, instead of heading off in the general direction only to miss an elevated path that you should have taken instead.

I think we’re all overly conditioned by waypoints and map markers. If you get a bit lost, try it..! I quite enjoyed the navigation with this approach. It doesn’t hurt that the environments are often gorgeous to inspect and take in.

@HallowMoonshadow It's interesting. On one hand, seeing all these out in the open leaks is weird. But the system is so similar to the old one (at least in terms of the system's design) that I'm left not really caring too much either way.

I hope the UI is reasonably distinct, or it comes with cool new features. Because if it doesn't, Nintendo's going to have to appeal entirely on its exclusives lineup for me to want to buy it. I'll be grabbing everything else on my Steam Deck.

@Tjuz The problem is density of content. XC1 features almost nothing to discover in its gigantic world. Lots of enemies, plenty of pretty views, but it's all pretty barren otherwise. XC2 solves this with streamlined, more segmented areas that were filled with interaction points. XC3 goes back to the big open environments, but populates these with a lot more stuff to see and do, which is my personal favorite approach.

Combat has always been the weakest point of these games for me. It's always either way too hard or way too easy, and often I don't feel fully in control of it. XC2 is a PITA to actually fully figure out combat-wise, but it does offer the most control in battle, so there is that.

Although XC2 was definitely the worst in terms of randomly aggro'ing high level enemies early in the game.

XC2 has better sidequests in general (how could it not? XC1's are literally all bottom-of-the-barrel MMO filler side-quests), but throws up too many annoying roadblocks to actually completing them. Side-questing in XC3 was the first time they actually did it fully right.

Other then the magnetic joycons and the fact it'll use some sort of AI upscaling tech there really isn't much all different is there @Ralizah?

Have to admit I'm kinda shocked there isn't I dunno... Some attachment that beams a 3D projection of Mario's face into your living room or something stupid like that.

It's absurdly safe from them. Rather milquetoast and I don't typically think that of Nintendo.

@HallowMoonshadow I'm not surprised. Their current president is a businessman as opposed to a visionary. All of their wackadoodle consoles of recent years were presided over by Satoru Iwata.

Could be significantly different on the UI/software side, like the 3DS was. We'll see. But yeah, at present, all these leaks are underwhelming. It's JUST a new Switch. This feels less like Switch 2 and more like Switch Pro so far.

Also not loving the move back to LCD. I'm spoiled with the SWOLED's gorgeous screen. Same with Steam Deck OLED. And even my Vita, which I still dip into on occasion.

That said, if they ship it with an impressive new 3D Mario that shows off the capabilities of the system and it runs older Switch games better? I'll probably grab it. I'd love to replay some of their older exclusives at higher framerates.

Same here TBH. I've only beaten 1 Switch game since buying it.

I am grateful my Switch backlog isn't as big as PS4 or PS5 though.

@kyleforrester87 Sounds like I'll definitely have to detox from my constant use of the enlargened minimap in the first then! It's very helpful to figure out where any mission collectibles or secret areas might be, as it doesn't actually have any fog of war unlike the main map. I feel like half the time I'm running around, it overlays my game and I'm actually just playing Pac-Man trying to get the yellow circle to whatever point of interest I've focused on.

@Ralizah Yeah, everything I've heard about the third game is that it's in most ways the best of both worlds. Seems like the iteration actually helped them get to the right place eventually, which is not always a given! Hearing about the Future Redeemed DLC is actually what initially got me interested into the franchise. From a writing perspective, them combining thirteen years worth of narrative across games with different stories and characters to wrap it into one final adventure to tie everything together and deliver a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy fascinates me.

I hope I'll not have many issues with the second game's combat as it definitely took me a while to get to grips with the first. I'm probably still not playing optimally right now. The first time I tried getting into the game, I completely screwed myself over with leveling and my strategies within the combat. I'm happy at least I've now gotten to a point where I can comfortably start a combat sequence without getting trampled. Helps that in most cases I'm ridiculously overleveled though, haha.

I wasn't expecting the Switch 2 direct to happen on April 2nd, but it doesn't rule out a Summer release window for the new hybrid device.

As for it not being fully backwards compatible with all Switch 1 games, hopefully the 1% outliers are Labo or niche games no one plays.

Finally getting around to Donkey Kong Country Returns and Christ, it’s sterile. I know it’s from that era of Nintendo where you had this and Kirby’s Adventure Wii and New Super Mario Bros but I expected Retro to bring a bit more charm to the series. It’s night and day compared to even Country 1 never mind 2 and 3, the worlds are just called ‘Jungle’ or ‘Forest’ instead of actual themes and the graphics are mostly painfully boring 3D environments that feel like default settings in Unreal or Unity. Physics are wonky, the roll barely registers and I’m using buttons rather than motion controls and DK has a turning circle like a literal ape rather than the tight controls of the SNES games. It’s not bad, just stiff, devoid of charm and a bit soulless. Difficulty never feels very fun either, the added checkpoints and borderline limitless lives feel like a crutch to add more irritating elements like twitch gameplay or memorising obstacles. I’ve heard Tropical Freeze is better to be fair.

@nessisonett Although my view of the game isn't quite so negative, I agree with you regarding the general theming and difficulty in particular. I remember the difficulty curve being all over the place leading me to drop the game on the 3DS.

Interesting you decided to start with DKCR actually. Tropical Freeze is almost unanimously considered the better game, and solves both of those issues IMO.