Sheikah

Oh yeah, I think they were cooler than most new Pokémon, just saying that nobody really seemed to voice anything when it didn't carry over to No No Kuni 2. But because Pokémon, people complain in this situation. Always thought something like this would happen. Just constantly making up new Pokémon that for whatever reason weren't discovered in the previous games was never going to be sustainable. Not at all fussed as the newer Pokémon designs generally speaking don't hold a candle to gen 1/2. Personally I hope they enrarge as many Pokémon fans as possible while making the cuts, because Pokémon fans are the worst. ;P Maybe now they will be able to concentrate on more important things like shaking up the gameplay/structure of the main series.

There's very few Pokémon you're actually playing as (and never in the main titles), you're just issuing commands. A better comparison would be the creatures you direct to fight for you in Ni No Kuni, which as far as I know nobody really cares about and they didn't all reappear in the sequel.

Just delete everything but Gen 1 and a few select Gen 2. Then sit back while listening to We didn't start the fire.

They already let you do time travel by changing the system clock, it doesn't break the game at all. You could make a single duplicate of every item technically with cloud saves but there are creative ways around this. One way is for a mark to be put against any items acquired before a save restore to make them untradeable. Another is to limit save restores to once every 30 days to greatly reduce the amount of items you could gain from this. These are just some thoughts off the top of my head, I'm sure a more elaborate/satisfactory solution could be conceived. It shouldn't be a big deal anyway since AC isn't a competitive game.

If you can time travel in this one by changing the system clock then why disable cloud saves? Seems unnecessary to me. Just put in a limit on the amount of times you can save restore and there's really not much of a problem.

Actually it's to do with preserving the time mechanic from what I've read, not necessarily cheating. You could always do this in past titles by changing the system time so not sure why they suddenly object to that. Nintendo could have developed a more rigorous cloud storage system - there are games on other systems that get around many of the issues they seem to face. I see no reason why they couldn't allow you to restore your save and "skip time", as it were. They could even adopt a crude approach of allowing one save restore every 30 days. That way it's difficult to get much gain from this but you still have the safety net of an online backup.

They're not giving you NES/SNES games, just NES for £18. They're not even giving us voice chat or messaging through the console. It's a joke of a service. If the NES games were not tied to online play then hardly anyone would bother. I don't see any reason to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt in this case - they have a track record for poor online and at no point have they brought cloud saves to a game that originally didn't have them.

Good for you. Doesn't change that it's not a good/acceptable service. Have Nintendo brought cloud saves to a game that didn't previously support it? I am trying to figure out why you think it's so obvious this will be fixed, and why we must wait until release to comment?

That is so silly. Literally what are we paying for with this online service?!

It's true that the conversation (and situation) is no doubt different over there but I do feel that it's deceitful for us to quietly accept the commentary that Nintendo are this trendsetter who give their employees a great work/life balance because they have this crunch policy. And FWIW, I don't see this as a problem specific to just Nintendo - it's an issue for many Japanese workplaces. It doesn't surprise me that Japan notoriously has one of the highest suicide rates for such a developed country. Articles right now are doing a good job of slamming these heavy "crunch" periods instigated at many studios, but sustained long working hours should receive just as much, if not more, scrutiny.

But what about the actual Japanese game dev who says Miyamoto expects people to work crazy hours? At best you can say this is mixed messages rather than clearing anything up. Maybe they don't crunch/up their hours to meet a deadline but if the "standard" working day in Japan is to work all hours then Nintendo are just as bad as the rest in terms of poor work/life balance. It's hard to bring Nintendo into the equation on this one because most crunch articles have focused on US/European developers where the work culture is different to Japan. I would love to see senior programmers come forward from Nintendo and describe their typical working hours.

It's not a very good example, I don't think. Too short a clip to tell.

Well [mention=883]Dcubed[/mention] originally commented on a visible drop from 60 to 30 FPS for certain sections of the game. If you saw the frame rate drop by half periodically I'm sure you'd notice it. I'm guessing he mentioned 30 and 60 FPS because these are the framerates the vast majority of games target.

That completion time is not that surprising to me, Necromancer is really short too. I think it's intended you play through the different characters to add to the playtime. Pretty sure playing fixed beat does mean you complete the game a lot quicker than you otherwise would as well. Bit of a shame the length isn't something like Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon but it's still pretty enjoyable. If they made a Bard mode-only game with lots more levels I'd very much be down for that. Crypt of the Tactician? [emoji4]

Nice one. Glad my explanation could be of some help.

Indeed they do, but I have seen the opinion that Bard is easy on quite a few discussion threads when I was looking things up. In my own experience, I generally agree that Bard mode is easier because you don't have to move to timed music but rather than can pause and figure out where every enemy is going to go (many enemies display an animation the beat before attacking you). And you rarely lose a beat playing Bard so end up with a lot of money, so can typically afford nearly everything sold in shops. That said, it was still enough of a challenge to be enjoyable, whereas I didn't enjoy playing the characters who had to keep the beat. So a really good decision to include that character, I think! I referenced "purists" because literally every other character (including the main character) observes the beat, and moving to the beat is kind of the game's thing, so it's easy to see why people might object to Bard on those grounds alone. People can be funny.

In the original when you play as the Bard, time stands still until you take a move. Then most enemies move every other beat, so you can advance on them or retreat. Some move every beat (move) like you do. There are some enemies like dragons where there is a narrow opportunity to attack without them attacking you back. Bard mod feels more strategy based than rhythm based. I'm sure purists will say it's too easy but it's still challenging enough, I found. As I say, I just couldn't get the idea there was a rhythm to follow with the music (this is no guitar hero) so Bard mode made the game enjoyable for me.

This was already in the original, if you played as the Bard. The best way to play in my opinion - I just couldn't sense the rhythm in the game at all. Felt like a very strange mechanic.

I think this looks great, like they've made a pretty version of Animal Crossing with extra stuff to do. I do think online really needs to be robust (no pausing the game for all visitors while a new visitor joins, no having to open some physical gate in game, for instance). I see seed growing is a thing...that could be fun it they really flesh it out. Animal Crossing has always felt like something you can do for an hour a day of new stuff and then all you have is fishing, so more stuff would be cool. Plus I loved the old school Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, so this is a good move by me.

This quote from an article on Kotaku might help explain that: So the first game will be a full length game, but focused only on Midgar. Which was probably only 10% of the game, if that. That's probably why all the screenshots seem to be from early in the game - it seems they're going to take their time with the plot so it plays out slower than in the original. I still expect this game might be delayed, mind. [emoji14]

It's not evidence to the contrary, that's NoA's own take while the games are mostly all made in Japan. It also specifically talks about delaying games, but a lot of companies do that and still have crunch. Also he talks about bringing a game to market (presumably USA), not about developing the game. Sounds more like what they do at NoA (translating and launching it there).

NoA can say what they like, I'd bet anything that where all the work happens to make the game in Japan that the staff are putting in crazy hours, extended deadline or no. Japan has a dangerous attitude to work and I've no reason to disbelieve for one moment the guy who worked intimately with Miyamoto.

It's definitely the opposite - there's actually reliably PS4 retail games included in Plus these days, whereas from the beginning to mid-life of the PS4 there was a noticeable drop in quality/desirability/value of titles from the PS3 days. If you're interested, this page lists what had come out in the past. It wasn't until over a year after release that PS4 got its first full retail PS4 game on Plus (Injustice Gods Among Us). Then, arguably it would be almost another year until it got another full retail PS4 game - Driveclub (coincidentally it got Rocket League at the same time, at a point when nobody knew how big it would be - that was a good month). In the past 6 months we have had Borderlands remaster, Sonic Mania, COD MW, Hitman, Overcooked, The Witness and What remains of Edith Finch. These are all really good, well received titles. The quality has definitely been there since the price increase - I reckon competition from other subscription services as well means they're less likely to drop the ball these days.

From the looks of it they might be doing a Majora's Mask thing (no bad thing) so could be quicker to develop sequel that way.

Can't find myself agreeing with that. PS Plus has actually gotten miles better since they started charging more, this month for instance you're looking at the Borderlands 2 + prequel incl DLC remaster as well as Sonic Mania, both cracking games. I bet if you ask most people on here they'd agree it has gotten a lot better if you compare it to the first half of the PS4's life. As for what Microsoft have been doing to restore favour, at the end of the day their exclusives haven't come close to the PS4's, and that really what matters to me.