The Nintendo Switch

I've been going physical to save internal storage for indie games and stave off my inevitable purchase of a microSD card, and also just because.

I got a nice little plastic game card wallet that will hold 24 carts in a pleasing durable rectangle, saves time shuffling the actual cases around

coincidentally, i am also living in a pleasing durable rectangle

"wonderful mess" about covers this so far; i'll give it a few more days but the script and (human) character design is SO bad. thank god for japanese voice option so i don't have to hear these guys talk.

huh, I like all the human characters and still like the English VA for the main crew, just not the nopons who are obnoxious

the game has been way more than the sum of its parts for me to the point where I don't really want to dissect it for fear of breaking the spell

Yeah it doesn’t work on paper but I’m having loads of fun.

Bayonetta 1/2/3(!) coming next year

so psyched! all i need now is a Wonderful 101 port

got one of these this week. apart from some wacky interference which seems to fuck up everything bluetooth (and i have nfi where it's coming from – i've bought a wired controller because i can't be doing with this shit), it's one hell of a feat of engineering. already i'm playing it more than i thought i would.

mario is impressive but the camera seems far worse than any game sice mario 64. i've only got started with zelda and am hopelessly lost but that's fine. when skyrim drops in price i'll finally get to play it more than the <10 hours i gave it on my ps3/360 (honestly can't remember which it was) copy (being portable is the reason to buy skyrim twice imo).

I'm thinking of getting one of these too. The iOS game market has really gone to crap, it seems to me, and ambitious developers who want to get paid can go switch instead now. thinking of getting Zelda, Arms, and Mario to start with; the kids may demand Mario Kart, we'll see. We'll go from there.

I can confirm that XC2 goes all the way down the insane JRPG story rabbit hole in the second half. the writing never stops being corny anime though

sold

ok, I've got my heavy hitter cartridges, what download or indie games should I consider? keep hearing binding of Isaac, cave story ... what else?

Stardew Valley, Thumper, Tumbleseed. Crawl is a good local multiplayer game that comes to Switch next week.

re: XC2 i'm still really enjoying it though the current chapter I'm on is rough since the character I was most accustomed to playing is currently unavailable for story reasons right at the same time as a bit of a difficulty spike. I've had to go grind side quests for the first time and the side quests in this game are mostly mmo-level busywork. don't neglect your secondary options in jrpgs is the lesson here.

the music continues to be great even for the high standards of the xeno series. some very nice sounding choral bgm in 2 of the later cities

How is SteamWorld Dig 2? Looks cool.

ok I just ordered one of these. how important is it to get a pro controller?

steamworld2 and golf story are recommended

steamworld dig 2 is excellent if you like Metroid style platformers

Pro controller was essential for me because I have giant hands and was cramping up using the joycon grip, give the grip a try first though if you're not in the same boat

that's what people mean by metroidvania, right? scrolling platforms?

+ upgrading abilities leading to backtracking to earlier sections of the game to visit new opened up areas that were previously inaccessible (e.g.., there was a tunnel high up on the wall on the first screen, but now that you've unlocked triple-jump you can finally reach it)

so og Zelda, too?

metroidvanias are necessarily side scrollers

Zelda 2 is closer

don't you mean zelda 3?

get sonic mania, and get enter the gungeon next week

xp ymmv
https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/what-is-the-difference-between-a-zelda-clone-and-a-413536/

xps pro controller not needed, the standard grip is just fine IMO. the only reason I might get one is to avoid the charging issue with the joycons (if you play docked, and your charge runs out, then you have to play in portable #firstworldproblems) even then a charging grip is half the price

that said i love this system enough to maybe spring for the pro controller anyway

am i the only person who just plays the system for all games with one joycon in each hand? it seems the perfect answer to gaming.

Probably not, it's p ergonomic, that's a sometimes food for me though (usually because I forget)

I mostly go pro controller

one joycon per hand is probably the optimal scheme for Odyssey truth be told, but i had a hard time getting used to that

it’s a console with lots of control options have some words lads

The iOS game market has really gone to crap, it seems to me

seems like the economics of game development have caught up. no way is a five buck game going to equal a flagship console game.

one of the reasons i got a switch is the staggeringly cheap games. au$69 for the biggest ever open-world super mario is just incredible.

homing hat is big advantage for odyssey

oh hey, for those of you who DON'T do the individual joycons-in-each-hand playstyle for Mario, I have some news for you: cappy can be thrown by using the right hand joycon like a wiimote! finding that accidentally while playing was one of my biggest OMG I LOVE THIS GAME moments

au$69 for the biggest ever open-world super mario is just incredible.

finished XC2. good game overall, would highly recommend to anyone who likes JRPGs but probably builds up way too slowly for people who aren't into the genre or the anime stylings. i wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being the best regarded xeno-series game besides xenogears but i'm not ready to call it a masterpiece.

pros:
+excellent music, mostly excellent environment design. these are what this series/studio is most known for and it shows
+good story that takes its time to blend in the weirdo JRPG mythology stuff before going somewhere really unexpected in the final act.
+combat system is fun once you have all the main mechanics available, and it does a good job of introducing small twists deep into the game
+very player-friendly save/retry system, you never lose any progress when you die which makes it way less stressful to experiment

cons:
-parts of the UI and especially the map UI are bad. in general, the whole game lacks the Nintendo Polish and it seems likely that Monolithsoft is still working independently on these despite being part of Nintendo now.
-the rare blade designs that were done by guest artists are extremely hit or miss
-the sections of the game where the story takes away one or more of the main characters were much less fun for me because this game's combat system is more about mastery of execution than tactics and thus taking away something you've been relying on is disruptive in a bad way rather than an interesting way.

good review, thanks. i'll probably give it a chance when it comes down in price

Wow that was quick, I’m on chapter 5 so roughly how far in am I?
I read somewhere that a lot of the main Monolith staff didn’t work on the game as they were called in to help on Zelda, so this game was made by a smaller more B type team. It shows as it is rough around the edges and as you say and lacks technical polish, even compared to the first XC which was a minor miracle of programming given the hardware they had to work with. I’ve had two occasions where I’ve been trapped in menus and can’t get out, had to reset the software - can’t remember the last time I had to do something like that with a Nintendo published game. And yes some of the character designs are truly awful.

Still enjoying it though, seeing that “battery low” message so often is a good indication that I’m having fun haha

heh, i feel that one!

you're probably close to halfway? there's 10 chapters but the last one is mostly just cutscenes and the final boss & ending

i think my final playtime was under 60 hours but i really rushed through some bits, i'd guess 60-70 hours would be normal

That sounds about right, I’m about 38 hours in. Extra levelling up at inns feels like cheating!

the inn mechanic is, i assume, essentially a difficulty slider so you can do a lot of sidequests and not outlevel the main quest if you don't want to

ciderpress does your completed save file let you go run around and hunt down named monsters to fight and whatever or do you pop back to outside the boss room

For some reason I get annoyed by the latter system, like i just want to run around in Zelda with the world saved

same thing as zelda, it saves that you beat the game and you get a nice final title screen but when you load up you're outside the boss room