Yo, an official Western release of AAI2! I’ve played the fan translation, but definitely gotta pick this up to see and support the official localization, tell Capcom there’s enough of a market. Though IIRC, they were planning on localizing it at its original release but they needed either the localization team or the original devs for other stuff so they ended up not being able to. Nice to see they finally got back to it.
2 was the best for actual fighting gameplay, 3 had the best outside content (good campaigns, extra modes, and create-a-fighter with actual unique movesets), IMO. 4 just felt underwhelming (they gutted pretty much everything but a brutally short story mode and arcade ladder and then PVP) and had the real most broken guest characters (the Star Wars characters). 5 is the “black sheep” of the franchise but I actually still enjoyed the short time I had with it, I liked the new characters that weren’t copies/descendants of the old cast. 6 felt mid to me, don’t have much to say about it since I played it even less than 5.
Or Meta Knight in Brawl or Bayonetta in Smash 4, haha.
I really should go back and try picking up where I left off in Unicorn Overlord weeks ago, but for some reason I’ve found shiny hunting in Pokemon Violet more entertaining. I’m rather surprised at how Unicorn Overlord felt so bland and disappointing. I think I was expecting one type of game and got something quite different in a way that just couldn’t hold my interest. Maybe I just got burned out on high fantasy JRPG games and need to play something different yet still fun for me for a while.
I think they might wait for an FE4 remake until the next console. Engage had a middling reception and just released last year. FE games generally come out around 3-4 years apart unless they are companion games in the same setting (such as FE4 - 5 (Jugdral), FE6 - 7 (Elibe), and the Wii games (Tellius)), and a 3-year gap from last year will align with FE4’s 30th anniversary, which will likely help it sell in Japan (the novelty of another classic title finally releasing in the West will probably be enough to sell well here). If the Switch 2 releases early next year, 2026 will also be great timing to get enough of a handle on its capabilities to optimize for it well and really give it some good presentational polish.
I’ll just be content with a fix to the drift issue and a bigger handle thing for whatever the new Joy Cons are called so my hands don’t feel cramped playing with them. Adults play your consoles too, Nintendo.
Aside from hyper-aggressive protection of their IP to try to stop piracy, I legit can’t think of any scummy behavior Nintendo does that other game companies don’t do at either an equal or worse level. That includes MS and Sony.
EDIT: Further, emulation of a current-gen console may technically be legal depending on how you do it, but it’s not harmless. Some can/will use it in an essentially harmless way, but you and I know that the vast majority of users will use it to enable piracy.
Started Unicorn Overlord. Heard it was a strategy RPG, my favorite genre, and seeing the art style felt I had to try it. The gameplay is alright, I prefer moving individual units on a grid like Fire Emblem or P5 Tactica, but it’s an Ogre Battle style, where you build and move groups freely around the map. The art is really good. My one big criticism so far is that the story feels extremely generic. Hero is an exiled prince who needs to reclaim his kingdom from darkness and save his kidnapped girlfriend. Gee, where have I seen that before? /s I’ll keep playing but my motivation is low so it may be slow going.
I have this game on PC and just couldn’t get into it as much as the first game, but I loved the first game so take that with a big grain of salt. I recommend playing the first game first to get a good feel for the gameplay and characters. People compare these games to Sonic since the series did start as a Sonic fan game and some level design is reminiscent of Sonic, but they really are quite different.
+1 for the N64. My first Nintendo console (my first overall game console was a Genesis) and the first console to show me how games could really tell a story in an interactive way. So many great experiences with Mario, Starfox, Zelda, I’ll even give a shout-out to DK 64 beyond the DK rap. And of course, the 4-player multiplayer just doesn’t get any better, with the introduction of Smash Bros and Mario Party and some of the best racing games Nintendo’s ever made in Mario Kart 64, Wave Race and Diddy Kong Racing. Didn’t play too much GoldenEye but I’ll mention it anyway for mastering FPS fun with a single stick.
Is that on Switch? I have the PC version. Thought I would enjoy it more than I did. Just ended up feeling tedious to me with all the stuff to keep track of. Farthest I ever got in my attempts to play was the beginning of Chapter 3.
Game Sack is a great channel. Been watching since the days when it was both Joe and Dave (hard to believe Joe’s been doing it on his own for a few years now). One of the best retro game channels on YouTube.
This game is one of the most brutally difficult games I’ve ever played if you want to get any sort of good ending. It’s quite thematic in that way: the player is trapped in the curse with the main character, forced to meet unreasonable demands, but aware of the consequences of using the most effective tool to meet them. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I could never attempt it without giving up still relatively early on. That said, I still own my copy so maybe one day I’ll try again if I feel like a true test of my patience.
Death Battle did two episodes on the matchup, with each of them winning once. Link won when he had all his items and Cloud could use materia but couldn’t use summons (they were considered outside help which was against the rules in DB at the time). They said Link’s massively varied arsenal more than made up for Cloud’s pure strength advantage. Rematch, they added Link’s abilities from BotW and gave Cloud his summons back, and Cloud won, with the pure overwhelming power of the summons, of course.
If true, the Switch 2 might be coming out sooner than I expected, maybe this summer. I was expecting a spring announcement either way, but a release around the fall for a holiday season showcase. A summer release makes sense too, to leave room for a strong launch window lineup for the holidays.
I’d just like a wider grip for the joy-cons when detached and playing docked than the one provided, to make it as wide as a pro controller or other traditional controller, but I haven’t found any. Don’t count too much on any Switch 2 controller grip being any wider, though, in Nintendo’s eyes they’re still mainly a children’s toy company and will design their hardware primarily sized for children. I get cramps using even the DS and 3DS.
How about Turnip Boy Runs a Crypto Pump-and-Dump Scam?
That’s what I’m using it as. My copies of Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice are stuck on an ancient iPad I got 10 years ago, so I may get a copy of this even if I don’t play it for a long time or even ever just to be sure I have a still-playable copy of every game in the series (the iPad died years ago and I’m an Android guy now).
Super Mario RPG remake, got 4 stars of 7 about 6 hours in. Didn’t play a lot last week due to the holiday and other stuff keeping me busy. It’s pretty fun, but I’m just noticing now one unwelcome relic from the 16-bit era, no fast travel between checkpoints in a dungeon. I need to go back for items at what looks like just before a boss in an enemy-infested dungeon. Joy…
Nintendo has been more about innovation in gameplay more than graphics pretty much since the turn of the century, and aside from the Wii U it’s paid off for them pretty well, so why should they change that model? Further, this isn’t like the Wii days in which they got only shovelware or severely butchered versions of 360/PS3 games from third parties: the main difference in many third party Switch games compared to their MS/Sony counterparts is mostly just running at 30 vs 60 FPS with no other major graphical or gameplay changes.
That said, Nintendo has been blessed to have mostly weak competition in the handheld console market up to now, so also hasn’t felt much pressure from outside in the handheld world until recently. Their handhelds have had quite the long lifespans: the Game Boy lasted from the late 80s to the 2000s before the upgrade to the GBA, and even after the Switch released the 3DS was still seeing relatively strong support until the turn of this decade, putting that at around a nine-year life cycle. I mention this because the Switch for many is as much a handheld as a home console. Now the Steam Deck and similar handheld PCs are giving Nintendo their first strong handheld competition since the PSP (among dedicated gaming machines, I don’t include smartphones). That handheld challenge may also be behind fans’ push for a Switch 2 soon and/or featuring more graphical power than Nintendo may have originally been wanting. But even then, they are mostly best off moving at their own pace and not trying too hard to keep up with the competition. It’s when they have tried to keep up that they hit their lowest numbers compared to MS/Sony, such as the GameCube and the Wii U. When they do their own thing and take the time to get it right is when they are at their best.