Glen-i

See, I look at that, and it looks like an utter nightmare to traverse. Remember Lumiose City in X/Y? No-one wants that again.

Is it just me playing this at the mo? I have to give credit to Bravely Default II's character designer for having the nerve to shove a man in his 40's into your typical 18 year old JRPG party. And then double credit to the localisation team for making him Scottish! And not a slight hint of Scottish. Thick heavy accent Scottish! If Elvis interrupts a conversation and starts talking about why Scotland should go independent, I wouldn't question it for a second. It honestly feels like he was meant to audition for some BBC drama and accidentally went into the wrong building. And it's amazing! Anyway, time for some weird things I noticed. Keep in mind that I didn't touch the second demo because it wasn't a separate scenario like the first, so I might be stating things everyone else noticed ages ago. - They actually kept the fetch quests in the final game? That's disappointing, the 3DS games had nothing of the sort. - It's also weird that the world map doesn't let me know when a side quest becomes available, I'm finding myself going back to previous towns because I'm worried I'll miss something. - Why do the dungeons no longer have some kind of map? There was definitely one in the first demo, that's baffling. - Boy, Black and White Mages got done dirty in this game. Their spell repertoire seems to be far smaller than previous games! - Speaking of old jobs. I think I've got the replacement for Performer and a song like "My Hero" isn't there. I might not be able to do my hilariously busted "Double Shield BP Factory" tactic anymore. Apart from that, it's great. The battles are still fun and the asterisk holders still have those deep strategies that force you to adapt or die horribly.

Well, that's on you. But I will say after my first playthrough of Undertale, my view of it was strikingly similar to yours.

Oh, that's easy. Nomura is an utter nutter! You let him loose and you're gonna get crazy.

See that @Hero-of-Time took the easy way out when it came to Undertale. You monster.

Wait what!? Game ruined! Might as well move on! Snap without some form of Charmander Pinball is just not worth bothering with!

Man, PC crossplay would be amazing on this! Which is why it's not gonna happen. I bought one of those 2-game voucher things, before realising that MH Rise isn't actually covered by it... Woopsies! I'm so used to Nintendo having some part in publishing the series that I just took it for granted. It's fine though, I got Bravely Default and 3D World instead.

My issue here is not that it's switching it up, (I mean, the fact that I like Paper Mario: Colour Splash and the original should be testament to that) is that it's changing from something that barely any other gaming franchise provides into something that you see all over the place these days, a big massive world for you to explore that has barely any direction or urgency. It's a case of jumping on the bandwagon and it's just so uninspiring. And to reiterate a point I keep on making, open-world games are just so. Damn. Boring. Skyrim, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Breath of the Wild. I played all three and they're just so mind-numbingly dull. Walk somewhere for an hour desperately looking for something interesting while periodically getting hounded by enemies that you've long since stopped bothering with because it's just not worth the effort anymore. I started Bravely Default II yesterday and it felt so good to leave a town and go for a 10 second run towards the place I needed to go. A dungeon, that's not too big, but still has a few optional routes to go down if I so choose, while I take part in some solid turn-based battles. And then there was a boss at the end where I had to take my setup and see if it worked against what they threw at me. That took me around half an hour, you'd be really lucky to finish the first shrine in BotW in that time. Now, I'm not like @Dcubed there. I think he's overreacting and I don't think traditional Pokémon is dead, so to speak. But I just don't buy that it's somehow ambitious to blatantly ape what's the in thing these days. Especially when your series has carved itself a niche that no-one else is willing to fill.

I'm not going to get into all the gradual changes to the mechanics over each entry, because I already made a thread ages ago doing just that. If you think all Pokémon games are the same, then there's no point in trying to say otherwise.

There's one key difference between Star Fox and Pokémon Snap though. Star Fox encourages you to shoot as many things as possible in one run. The more, the better. Pokémon Snap's scoring system is categorised by Pokémon. You try snapping everything in one go and you'll probably end up with a bunch of mediocre pictures. It's far better to have one Pikachu pic be worth 5,000 points than 20 different Pokémon worth 1,000. The idea is to experiment with multiple runs and see how different Pokémon can be manipulated to get the shot you're aiming for. (Fits the frame, nice and big, in the center, facing you, doing something interesting)

Ooooh, yay... Old games! Old mechanics! Exciting! I could far easily suggest the hundreds of recent open-world games for you to play instead. I could throw a rock and I'll probably hit one somehow. Meanwhile, the only Pokémon-like games I can think of for Switch are Sword/Shield, Nexomon Extinction (which was surprisingly good) and the upcoming Pearl/Diamond remakes. Pokémon has dominated that market for so long that no-one dares attempt to compete with them. Well, apart for the occasional Dragon Quest Monsters games, but good luck getting those outside of Japan! EDIT: BTW, you know why they chose Cyndaquil as the fire starter? Because all the fire starters don't fit into a Feudal Japan setting at all. Cyndaquil's only there because they wanted a Gen 2 starter. How do I know this? Because you can't get the starters from Gen 2, Gen 5 and Gen 7 in Sword/Shield, even with the DLC. They planned that trio for a while.

It's weird, ever since I got my first dose, I've been slightly looking forward to April where I'll get my second, despite hating needles. My guess is it's a feeling of actual progress happening.

We don't really. It has almost none of the trappings of a new generation. (New Pokémon and a new region being the big two) Hell, we don't even know if battles will be the same! @Serebii is listing it as a Gen VIII game and I'm inclined to agree with him until more info comes out.

I don't think there's anything wrong with outsourcing to a small studio to work on something like this. And it's worth keeping that in mind. This is an even smaller studio then Game Freak. Anyone expecting a massive budget game from this is only setting themselves up for disappointment.