darksnowman

eShop sales, man. It's the wild west on there every week but if you take the time to sift through... Sweet. Wish listed.

Fine then! You lot can just have your campfire chinwags and Ieave me to hack the monsters.

They got me again. Tried out the demo for Agent A: A puzzle in disguise yesterday evening then immediately bought the full game which is currently on sale for 99p. (RRP £19.99!)

And I'm not buying a PS4 to talk with you either so you better find a compromise!

I'm looking forward to seeing what other themes they announce this year with all the upcoming anniversaries!

Yeah going by what I read shortly after launch, it was my understanding that you have to go to crazy lengths to attain the five-star rating. I was keeping in the back of my head to pave out some plots and move houses onto them to see if it would be a good way to sneak in extra paths when I would eventually decide to go for the five-star rating. How did you kill the flowers? I need to know.

There are few things I enjoy more than seeing previously unreleased games eventually getting their turn in the PAL region. Final Fantasy on GBA and DS, Dragon Quest on DS, Chrono Trigger on DS, Mario RPG through the Hanabi Festivals on Wii VC, to name a few of those mythical games that officially came to our shores at a later date, sometimes in their original form, other times upgraded or remade entirely. Amazingly, the well has yet to show any signs of running dry--a month ago, the Final Fantasy Legend trilogy came out on the Switch eShop. For further listening, check out the Retronauts episode. I pre-ordered, preloaded and made plans to play one or all three FF Legends over Christmas. But as with most best-laid Switch plans, an eShop sale came along and lead me astray. This time it was in the form of Tales of Vesperia for a tenner. I still made sure to have a go at FF Legend (1) before forgetting about it until the other day when the Nintendo survey came through. Collection of SaGa has some added bells and whistles (such as Super Gameboy-style backgrounds, two zoom settings and the ability to play vertically using a virtual button layout on the Switch touchscreen) but nothing that changes the games themselves beyond a speed-up option. I sent the same feedback via the Nintendo survey as I did for games like moon and Fire Emblem--offered my thanks for releasing the collection in PAL and asked that they consider bringing more previously unreleased games over here, but this time I added the suggestion that they could put in some more borders and perhaps Super Gameboy-style colour palette options. Even with Vesperia (which I was "console-locked" out of rather than region-locked) making eyes at me, I thought I was still going to complete FF Legend 1 in the week following its release. How wrong I was. Not only are these Gameboy RPGs, FF Legend is the first handheld RPG ever so old and archaic is very much the order of the day. Upon starting, you are unceremoniously dumped into the game and charged with creating your guild from humans, mutants and/or monsters. I opted for two humans (a male and female), a mutant and a monster then set about battling for cash to buy some gear. Levelling is an offshoot of Final Fantasy II whereby your stats themselves will increase in place of general level-ups. Except for monsters. At the end of battles a piece of meat might drop which you can choose to let your monster eat. I have allowed it every time, and the monster morphs into a new creature with a new skillset and potentially less HP. I haven't worked out if its random or not. The humans improve differently too--you have to buy stat increases for them! So perhaps it is just the mutants, then, that get their stat-ups from battle. Also, your party members have lives, meaning they can only be revived a couple of times before they're dead forever and you will have to recruit and train up replacements. My humans died a few times in the early going and I just reset because I don't know how valuable those lives will be later. Well anyway, about the game length. From the starting town, you learn that the central statue needs its armour, sword and shield. After increasing stats and getting some gear (attacks, weapons and spells have limited uses, by the way) I got cracking with world exploration. It's a tiny world--fine for the Gameboys first RPG--so I was able to get the items back to the statue fairly quickly, which I figured was going to open the way to the final two- or three-floored dungeon and boss. Clearly I never paid much attention to the above video and Retronauts podcast because I was totally oblivious to the games scope! Kitting out the statue is only the beginning because that two- or three-floored dungeon is actually a tower to climb that contains its own towns to stop off at. It's really surreal to open a door that opens onto a new world. Makes me wonder if the starting area is really the base of the tower or just another rung on the way up. Good job I reset before instead of now being lumbered with trying to limp through the game with my lives depleted, eh? I haven't noticed anyone on my friends list playing this. Buy it and join me on these legendary quests!

Umm, guys? I was doing the rounds on my island yesterday evening and before saving and quitting, I thought I'd talk to Isabelle because it had been a while. In recent weeks (since the Christmas break) I'd chopped down a bunch of native pear trees and moved non-natives to make more space for snowballs to spawn because, as you'll know, my island is covered with trees, out of control flowers and weeds. I did a bit of weeding in the newly cleared space, too. So, last night I remembered the island evals bemoaned the tree count (islanders getting lost in the woods, lol) so I thought why not check if there's a different message now. There was! Clutter. Quick and easy to rectify as I had heaps of items dropped all over the place for future decorating or crafting. Also sold off the remaining recipes, then back to Isabelle to see if she'd reverted to complaining about trees or something new... and... FIVE STAR ISLAND!! It's kind of embarrassing. My island is such an undeveloped work-in-progress; the worst five-star island I've seen! Found the lily-of-the-valley this morning so that's it confirmed.

Is this standard practise with other companies or just something you would demand of Nintendo in 2021? Like, I never considered--or saw anyone--asking for Bowser's Minions to be added to the 3DS eShop as its own game. Or any other bonuses that came with previous Mario ports and remasters, for that matter. Nowadays it seems to be the usual practise for them to add a bonus mode to a Mario re-release based on their past form--who's up for owning Mario Bros. arcade again? As for Splatoon, maybe the "normal" practise with a shooter would be to release the single player as the main game and the multiplayer as the DLC? Anyway from what I've seen, Nintendo have shown themselves open to spinning DLC content off into their own games if and when it grows big enough to be deemed standalone-worthy. Case in point: Cadence of Hyrule started out as DLC for Crypt of the Necrodancer. So I'm confident they'll do the same this year should the opportunity be there. @Dcubed Just me or is it a bit soon to be looking to a Switch 2? Give us a chance to play the current Switch first man!

What do I want from Nintendo themselves? When I think about it, very little! There are plenty of Nintendo games I still don't have (Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Origami King, the Wii U ports, etc) and since my ownership of a Switch doesn't live or die by Breath of the Wild 2 or Metroid Prime 4, I'm in a good place with it going into 2021--in fact, I'm snowed under with games. Personally, I suppose it would be cool to have more updates in Mario Maker 2 (there is still space for another style!), it would be nice to have an Animal Crossing update that adds makes menu management and island renovations faster and easier, has the ship sailed on Odyssey and Super Mario Party DLC? Hmm, in fact, maybe they could ease off on the Mario output for a while to let us (me) play what is already there. A Nintendo RPG that isn't Mario or Xenoblade but something totally new? F-Zero with a story mode and galactic travel like a Mario Sports RPG mixed with a Star Fox Battle for Atlas? A new Super Tennis? Crazy asks. Perhaps Another Code is gone forever but what about a new Nintendo-made point-and-click style adventure game? What about Nintendo sending Camelot to assist the Sports Story indie dev? Ooh, wait, what about a follow-up to Mario & Rabbids. I do like the Rabbids. A Rabbids RPG with a job system. Imagine the chaos! Nintendo are far better at coming up with ideas than me, so I'm glad to leave it up to them and if none of what I said comes to fruition there will still be the eShop! Okay there is one thing I'd like as soon as possible: Joycons that don't drift. If they release a model with no drift (have they?) I'd be there day one. I never really played the Switch in portable mode anyway, but since the left joycon went out of whack over a year ago, I bought a pro controller and keep it docked now. It's just no fun to fight with it.

All righty, will do! I thought there might have been something in-game I wasn't finding/ triggering. I'd been going around the map (which is why I was worried about time being a factor) to see if there was a training area with static objects to whale on. But that's cool, I'll check online for general combat pointers before spending more of the remaining credits on the demo.

Just did the beginner quest three times, and fainted just the twice. First time as the Dual Blades character, the Wyvern got involved and somehow, with no effort on my part other than hammering X and A for all I was worth, I ended up with it as my mount. Nothing fancy ensued and it wasn't long until I was being stretchered back to the starting area. Would be good to know what happened so I can do it on purpose sometime. LOL. After tracking it down again I used the stun weapon, the pitfall, the barrels, the healing items, a whetstone or two, and eventually completed the quest. The dual blades user has potential. Then I went again with the Insect Glaive character because the unconventional idea of commanding insects caught my attention. Once loaded in I sneaked around a bit, found the Great Izuchi and the Wyvern sniffing round each other and engaging in a bit of handbags in the water area to the left of the map, and watched them until the Wyvern took off. I got stuck into the Izuchi (aka spamming in a panic) ZR and it went down really quickly. The insect glaive user has potential. Thirdly, the Gunlance character because I fancied trying out the ammo from the item box. Yeah, that didn't happen, so who is the ammo for? Anyway, I fainted with this character but took the Izuchi down fast, so the gunlance must really pack a punch (if you get in close and button mash like I did). The gunlance has user has potential. Is there any depth to this? There, must be, right? If there is, how/ where do you find the character moves? Will there be combat tutorials in the full game? It's been handy to have the pop-up reminders about the wirebug because I keep forgetting to Spider-man out of the way--is there some way of turning on similar kinds of noob reminders for combat prompts? Is there any type of lock-on or Z-targetting or does Monster Hunter still think it¡s above that? How do you check the time remaining on the mission? Can you toggle it on so it's displayed at all times? Will the arrow pointing to the quest target be there in the full game?

Would be a weird choice, to be sure. But the fans are clambering for more sword users aren't they.

Little does Mario remember, they faced each other in a similar fashion at the end of Yoshi's Island. Did Bowser and Ganon from Skyward Sword always look so similar and I just never noticed it??

Thought he looked like a Mario-ised Lion-O myself!

With my only experience of 3D World being the style in Super Mario Maker 2 (it's the worst style), it's still strange and cool to see it in 3D. Looks good!

With the existence of the deluxe edition and its "recommended DLC", they could well be laying the foundations for paid DLC or a mixture of free updates and paid? Have they said what (if anything) is locked behind the launch day amiibo?

The comments will be furious when Bowser's Fury is shown to be like Bowser's Minions!

I was thinking about that as I formulated that paragraph and I couldn't remember if Tales of games sell a sidequest log in the grade shop? If so, then it's all good, otherwise in a New Game + you are still going to miss the same stuff because if you don't know about it you don't know about it.

I read a thing last year that mentioned the impact of that which stuck in my mind. They thought indie games were still selling like mad on the eShop because Switch-only players will have friends with Gamepass or whatever, who recommend the game to them and they pony up.

I can't recall profit margins, but I've routinely seen claims like "60% of our sales are on Switch!" which leads me to believe they are doing well enough...?

The accents weirded me out in the demo. ...was just checking the release date this morning so I'm still interested.

So after the desert area, I got back to the boat (docked at Nordopolica with no way of leaving until the story allowed) and went about mapping out as much of the world as the boat could reach. Aside from a few spots to harvest ingredients and some temple-looking stone structures that I could do nothing with, there weren't really any new points of interest! What's more, getting a good look at the small north eastern icy area, there was no snow town to be docked at. There is a gap in the ice so perhaps a sunken igloo city will emerge later? Fingers crossed. If not, with the large desert area and big stretch of canyons, plus the usual plains and forests, I'm a bit miffed that the snow environment is just a few ice sheets to navigate around. Strangely, the newfound freedom of the boat was, its own way, short-lived as after playing through a handful of rapid-fire story developments (during which some party members left again and rejoined again), air travel was bestowed upon us. When exploring with the boat, it had slipped my mind that I was carrying something I'd vowed to deliver, but with the total freedom of the skies, it came back to me and I went over to the port town from earlier in the game to complete, what I thought, was the only sidequest going. How naive I was! I pulled up a guide to see what was recommended now I can go anywhere and not only are there new sidequests to do, there were some that you were already supposed to be in the middle of. I'm okay with some obscure and missable sidequests, but not the vast majority of them. I've been talking to everyone everywhere I go and watching all the skits, and I think it's unfair for there to be no hints about any of the side content. I'm not asking for a checklist of sidequests, just a casual "I hear this has been happening over there" from an NPC or a party member mentioning in a skit they would like to pay a visit to their hometown would be a nice way of putting it on my mental radar and letting me choose if I want to visit these places or not. You know? The default position should not be that you miss everything except the main story. I later discovered (through this forum) that Tales of Symphonia also had more than its fair share of missable quests so I guess this could have been a staple of the series in 2008 when Vesperia originally came out. Anyway, sidequest gripes aside, there have been some interesting goings on in the main story. Some characters have been offed (for good and ill), and it seems we have now been charged with a quest to save the world. I must say that it's been refreshing to have had all this time with the characters and the world they inhabit before being burdened with the task of saving the entire planet. That's not to say the game has been lacking direction until now. The party members have been proactive in their own ways, fighting for a better world for themselves and the people they know without aiming for anything world changing. The lead character, Yuri, isn't perfect or a chosen hero. He constantly makes the party members decide if they are going to continue together or if they'd prefer to pursue their own ends. It doesn't come across as him being blasé or disinterested in who accompanies him--you know he wants them to stick around and work towards their goals together, but only if it makes sense for them. The party is forced to reassess themselves and their motivations and they are a stronger unit for it. They even push against each other and it makes them all come across as individuals with their own flaws, struggles, and things to achieve rather than a patchwork group of has-beens that just happen to be travelling the world together because they have nothing better to do. I left off at a save point in the (difficult to locate) Egothor Forest area. This has been the first new place I've been immediately comfortable in without feeling the need to level up or buy new equipment. It makes it easy to get through in one go while conserving items for whatever boss awaits. I'm not sure what will come next. There aren't a lot of new areas left to go so the save the world quest could well amount to nothing more than an endgame fly-around possibly to "awaken" those stone temple things I couldn't interact with previously. What I want to do, is to have a base of operations for the guild and a centralised place for guild quests so we can make Brave Vesperia the best guild in the land!

I just know as soon as I buy it they will announce MK 9 though. And with Nintendo's short lead time from announcement to release these days... Perhaps, I'll keep an eye out if it is on sale (physical) in the January sales.

Feel free to resume the Yakuza chat, don't mind me! Haha, yeah I definitely need to be taken under someone's wing to get me through the basics and into it. The gameplay loop in Tri didn't really grab me, but again, maybe being shown how to appreciate and enjoy the game instead of thinking "not ANOTHER fishing quest??" or "what do I have to stick a tracker on and button bash to death NOW??" would be good.