Glen-i

Right, next week will be on... Peach's Birthday Cake Who the actual hell is this cake for? It's far too big! Peach has clearly gone loopy. With a ridiculous 14 happening spaces and a lottery no-one wants to actually pay for, this board has plenty of opportunity to throw away all your money. Do you feel lucky enough to actually pull off a Piranha Plant star steal? Do you feel 30 coins worth of lucky? @Dcubed won the last game, so he got to choose the next special block to enter play. So, as well as the Speed Block, we'll be seeing the Warp Block from now on. When the Warp Block shows up, it will swap the person who hits it with another person on the board. The person you warp with is chosen at random. In most Mario Party games, this tends to be a powerful item that can really turn the tables if used correctly. But this is Mario Party 1, and Mario Party 1 hates you. In Mario Party 1, this thing is an utter menace that seems to show up at the worst possible moment to ruin someone's life. Not using it is not an option, and you don't even get to roll a normal dice that turn. No-one likes the MP1 Warp Block. Current Players Glen-i - Yoshi

I found a shop in the main town, the one with the school, that sells hold items. But no side quests yet. Just finished up a session with @Mokong. It really alleviates the boredom I feel with the region when you're chatting with someone else and casually catching Pokémon together. I can already tell the online co-op is gonna be this game's saving grace for me. It also doesn't hurt that we can help each other find TM's by standing on one and getting the other person to follow the map icon showing where they are. And naturally, comedy can occur more frequently. Here's one from my sesh with @Ugh first aid. There she is, reducing a grown woman to tears through the power of sarcastic clapping.

I think the Pokémon Center nurse tells you the recommended goal. I imagine she hints at where the lowest level one is.

Ah, so level scaling isn't a thing here then. Mine was the same level.

What level Pokémon did the Gym Leader use? I did that one first and I'm curious.

Stamina matches tonight at 8pm.

I don't think that's meant to show you exact positions. It's just a general "it's in the surrounding area" thing.

This is amusing to me. Literally stumbles on one of the most consistently strongest Pokémon in the competitive scene and says "Could be cool".

BTW, if anyone wants to join Ugh First Aid and I in this, give me a shout and I'll give you the code.

OK, raid battles are legit amazing in this game! So much faster and fun!

When I read that, I was shocked, but thinking about it, I don't think I should be, really. You can't realistically progress through this game with the left stick and 1 button like you could with previous games. What with moving the camera and the other buttons you need here.

I forgot to respond to this due to... Well, the omnishambles of everything else, but you seem to be right. There's no option to use the "Set" style of gameplay. I checked the settings both before and after I got my Fuecoco, and it's nowhere. That's been a thing since Red/Blue, and it's wild to think it's actually gone now. Don't want to play "Shift" style? Tough! Granted, Legends: Arceus didn't have the option, but that forces you to use "Set" and the way turn order is handled is completely different, so it's not quite the same there. This game, man. It's really not filling me with confidence that this is the right direction to go for the series.

Go ahead and nominate my performance for the "Most atrocious luck in Mario Party" award! Absolutely demolished! Luigi landed on a Bowser Space 3 times, and he still had better luck then me! Absolutely atrocious behaviour from @Dcubed tonight. Some proper "Eff you, got mine" tactics in play. He'll happily lose 5 coins if it meant everyone else also loses 5 coins. In fact, he did that 3 times! Naturally, he won. Because Mario Party 1 is of the same mindset. The game is proper unfair, y'all. Anyway, @BowserBasher came 2nd, I came last.

Sword/Shield ran fine outside of online Wild Areas. It's definitely the open world having an impact.

That actually was a case of the American trailer being weirdly different to the Japanese one. It animated a lot better in that one.

I'm really not keen on how little direction you're given. Feel like I'm wasting a lot of time doing nothing. And holy hell, that performance gets proper atrocious at times. Thanks, open world, for making things worse. Other then the Pokémon and battles themselves (Digging the texture revamp they have), the rest of the game is just SO BORING to traverse. Thank god for the paths, because I'd easily get lost in these big fields. Co-op doesn't give you the option to actually battle the AI together (The one cool thing about Let's Go), so a bit disappointed there. But everything moves relatively smoothly. It says a lot that the most fun I've had so far was faffing about with the trainer card and getting a picture. Managed to settle on one where it looks like I've been slapped while my cousin recoils in shock.

Oh, this is cool! Will have to let her know.

Still a spot for one more person for Mario Party 1 tonight.

Actually, haven't started. My cousin, Ugh First Aid, was recently declared medically blind. She's been improving to the point where she can somewhat play some games. Mostly RPG's because of their slower pace. Or games with big UI's. (Unfortunately, HD games are notorious for having tiny UI's) So, in a attempt to help her get through her copy of Violet, (and to stop me falling asleep like with most open worlds) she and I will be playing the main story part together entirely through co-op, or as soon as it becomes available. So, for once, you lot will probably finish before I do. Well, I say "for once", but it happened in Legends.

Really? Surely, they wouldn't have removed the "Set" option? That'd be stupid. It's the closest thing to a difficulty option left in the series!

Well, I can't imagine going with a new model for the human characters helped much. Arceus clearly uses the Sword/Shield humans as a base for the playable character. So that was less work. That said, it wasn't perfect. It was defo more buggy then Sword/Shield. I still remember the Snorlax that rocketed up for no reason. Make the world bigger and it gets harder to catch this stuff. That's just the price you pay.

It kinda looks like you're giving the shell the finger when you slow it down. It's beautiful!

Not gonna lie, he had rotten luck tonight. Still funny though.

I'm gonna guess you mean that in terms of performance? Because that game is proper crap. Sword and Shield also ran fine, outside of the Wild Area when playing online, but that was down to online lag making other trainers move like an old school MMORPG. I'm telling you, open world games mean corners have to be cut in places. Especially with a tight deadline like this had.

Yep, I'm not surprised an open world game knocked up in such a short time would have problems like this. Stuff always falls through the cracks. But it's open world, and it's Pokémon, so it can easily get away with it. I imagine that patch that just got dropped a few days ago probably tries to fix some of this.