Topic: Nintendo Switch Discussion

@SplooshDmg Oh, just Tsubasa and Touma? Yeah your attacks are weak sauce until you get #4 and the damage really only starts adding up once you get #5. You're still "in the tutorial" without the full battle system yet. Plus half of the fun characters with fun dialogue aren't there yet. Other than Maiko lol.

Don't get me wrong it's not like the game opens up into something different, it doesn't, but you're operating with a skeleton crew without even a full party in a game where even the off-stage (not -in party) characters are active participants in battle....it doesn't get to full power until you have more than a full team. It won't become something it's not already, don't expect it to "open up" into a different game, but the battle flow is more dynamic and fun when you actually have all the moving parts.

At peak with a full team you're just in a constant flow of chain attack duo/special performances.

@NEStalgia Yeah, I'd tell you my biggest gripe is just battle feels WAY too slow right now. It's like I said with Yakuza LAD, where they wouldn't shut up for six straight hours and then I finally got to play the game. After they finally shut up for a minute, I absolutely loved the game. I'll try to press onward and see where this goes.

@SplooshDmg Yeah if you're not liking the battle or the characters so far, I can't guarantee that's going to change, but I will say both the character dialogue (especially the SIDE CONTENT/"Persona type daily around town activities") gets a lot more fun, a certain FE dragon girl is a lovable highlight later on, and battles definitely become "constant chain damages", the only down-side is you start to get tired of the special performance/all out music video attacks eventually because you see/hear them SO freaking much. But yeah you have a 4 person party, and the 2-3 on the outside of the party ALSO get attack moves for the performances/combos/tag-ins which is really the full battle system. 3 characters would be like playing P4G with jut Yu, Brosuke, and waifu-in-red-whatever-her-name-is and nothing else.

@NEStalgia I mean, it's not that I dislike the battles as much as I dislike maybe how utterly gimped you are in the early stage of the game. It's The Witcher 3 all over again. Geralt is basically helpless until you hit level 10 or, and then by the time you are level 30 you're so OP you've trivialized the entire game. I can appreciate that TMSFE might suffer from some early balancing issues. I'll stick with it and so long as these trash fights eventually pick up the pace I can probably hang onto my sanity.

I've already met Tiki, and I do love Tiki. I genuinely can live with the brainless plot line so long as the gameplay is fun and engaging. I mean, I love Fire Emblem: Engage, after all.

@SplooshDmg Tiki's side quests alone are worth the whole rest of the game later on. Nothing pivotal but just tons endearing charm.

Yeah, it's still hard to guarantee, at this point you'll like it if the battle isn't clicking with you, but, IMO P5 and TMSFE are practically the same battle system but with more flamboyant music/anime action in the latter, so if you didn't hate P5's battle system I can't imagine you hating TMSFE's. Right now you haven't even got a whole party, so it's no different than P5 with just Ryuji + Yu & Mona and no multi-personas to keep the chains going. You may like it more when it's all available or not, but you won't like it less, that's for sure When you have a more full than full party you can tag in to "off stage" (idle idols) moves into battle to ensure you have the elementals available to keep any chain going pretty indefinitely, so you basically end up with a full SMT/EO party of 5-6 characters engaged in battle, a "front row" and "back row" (kinda.)

@NEStalgia Okay, so I found what I was missing. You can't enter the boss of the second Idolsphere without visiting Tiki to learn some new abilities, etc. During my visit to Tiki I was able to upgrade weapons and stuff and now I don't feel so gimp. I just got the fourth character and he damage output is definitely significantly higher than the rest of the gang. So, I'll stick with it. So long as battles don't just feel like a slog I think I'll be into this. It was probably just the early game growing pains putting me off.

@SplooshDmg Nice! Yeah, I really figured you'd be into the game, and was surprised at your initial reaction, until you said you only had half a party....then it made a lot more sense The damage/chains keep expanding with each new character, too since you can tag in the extra cast. Eventually it goes the other way and it's a little spammy that you just have mega attacks constantly. Definitely shouldn't be a slog after that beginning!

Given that we're likely nearing the end of the Switch's lifespan, that was a pretty decent Direct.

A lot of smaller scope titles (Mario Bros. Wonder, WarioWare Move It!, Detective Pikachu Returns) & remasters/remakes (Pikmin HD ports, Super Mario RPG, Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon), but at least they seem intent on keeping the release schedule full instead of leaving things dry.

Super excited for both Wonder & Mario RPG personally, and we even got a brief look at something for next year in terms of the new Peach game (too early to glean any meaningful info from it though).

Also, that GoodFeel platformer that kinda looked like a Mystical Ninja Goemon spiritual successor got a full reveal in the Japanese Direct.

Wonder if it's exclusive & why it wasn't shown in the western Directs? Even if it's not exclusive it looked better than a lot of the indie tier 3rd party games shown off.

One of the best directs we've had in imo. I was interested in at least 75% of what was shown which is rare for me. Usually less than 50% excites me. So it was good to see pretty much all bangers.

It was alright. Mario Direct, basically, alongside a bunch of ports.

Definitely on the lower end of the Direct scale, but not bad, by any means.

Microsoft won Not-E3 this year.

MS definitely crushed it. I'll still give the edge to N though. Lots of good stuff to look forward to forward to for both companies

This might be the first year that Microsoft has the best "E3" and also the Game of the Year 😁.

What I liked the most about today's E3-Direct was not the Mario game that looks and sounds very "New" but Pikmin 4 because I love that series.

Really good direct! I am going to dare say it was the best one from switch's era (and I don't even care about both pikmin or 2d Mario)... yes, it is mostly ports but that is what switch does best anyways.

@NEStalgia I've managed to stick with TMS FE and now I'm into the fourth act. You are definitely right, but it's also like I said with The Witcher 3. It's just so murderously unbalanced. In the beginning nothing felt like it would die because my party was so gimp. Now it's the opposite and nothing seems to want to stay alive very long because the chain attacks just massacre everything in sight. All in all, though. I dig it. I'm glad I managed to stick with it.

@Ralizah I will admit with shame that Mario RPG Remake is the first game I've ever preordered the same day it was announced. I want it. I neeeeeeed it.

@SplooshDmg Yep, I called it right! I knew you'd like it!! And yeah, I knew the difficulty would flip like that. It's somehow just fun though to be walking Armageddon through the power of pop idol performance!

@SplooshDmg lol

I'll probably get it. I never played the original (and am now glad I didn't). I have a bit of an up-and-down relationship with Mario RPGs, though (really like the Rabbids crossovers and TTYD; found the M&L games to be dull as dishwater)

@Ralizah I have admittedly not played the M&L RPGs. But Legend of the Seven Stars is probably one of my single favorite SNES games. I have absolutely dreamed of this game getting a proper remake, and then it totally blindsided me. Mario RPG is what you get when Nintendo forced Squaresoft to make a game that was less depressing and just pure fun.

@SplooshDmg happy that you're enjoying TMS! Altough the game can get easier in the mid section, the difficulty ramps up again after a while (but regardlessof it, it is some of the best turn base gameplay out there)

A bit late to the party but I finally ordered Tears of the Kingdom. Should be here today, but not sure if I'll be able to get to it until later in the week.

I'm a little imposed by it's apparent sheer size, but hopefully I'll be able to at least work through the main quest by the time Wonder releases.