Nintendo Switch - Games You Can Play Right Now

garion333 wrote:

The "wildly experimental" was about the hardware, not the software, but in general the Wii U did have more games dependent on the Wii U Gamepad than Switch has with the ... Switch.

The Wii U had a bunch of truly great games. MK8 and DKTF were the best entries in their series. Mario 3D World was quite good and spawned Captain Toad. Splatoon was a revelation.

Zombi U was the best version of Zombi, too. Having to look away from the TV and down to the gamepad to root around in your backpack for items was super cool and made that game feel pretty tense compared to other platforms.

I really enjoyed the dual-screen gameplay of Nintendoland and Game & Wario. Art Academy made excellent use of the Wii U gamepad, as well. So did Star Fox Guard and Fatal Frame (somewhat less successfully). None of those games will ever get ported off of that platform, though, so they're not much use here.

I'm really interested to see how Tokyo Mirage Sessions plays on Switch versus Wii U. On the Wii U, the second screen was used for immersive interactions like communicating with teammates while dungeon crawling. I suspect that's all just been shunted into a button press to pull up a menu.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Has anyone tried the Witcher port in handheld mode? How is it, especially interested in how small the UI is and easy it is to see things? Like Skyrim was fine for me, as a point of comparison.

I am playing Witcher on the Switch Lite and it is fine for me. It is a bit blurry at times but I dont feel like it detracts from the experience. The graphics are still a joy to behold and gameplay is great. I also find myself reading the books i find and glossary entries more than I did when I tried to play on Xbox.

blackanchor, Since you have a Switch Lite I'll make sure to ask you in the future about games on that system.

I find it borderline for some games. And some games are a pure delight on it (Captain Toad, Pokemon Shield).

DSGamer wrote:

blackanchor, Since you have a Switch Lite I'll make sure to ask you in the future about games on that system.

I find it borderline for some games. And some games are a pure delight on it (Captain Toad, Pokemon Shield).

I just got it for Christmas. i am currently playing the Witcher and Zelda: Links Awakening. I also have Resident Evil, Divinity Original Sin, and Phantom Doctrine which I have yet to play. I love the portability and it is quite comfortable. Since I've gotten it, I haven't touched the Xbox.

blackanchor wrote:

I just got it for Christmas. i am currently playing the Witcher and Zelda: Links Awakening. I also have Resident Evil, Divinity Original Sin, and Phantom Doctrine which I have yet to play. I love the portability and it is quite comfortable. Since I've gotten it, I haven't touched the Xbox.

It's an awesome system. I love mine. I think I'll always have an OG Switch as well, because I like the "Switchiness" of the console. The ability to play motion games, etc. But for a thing I can throw in my backpack and play games on it really rocks.

The reason I say I might ask you questions later, though, is because the Switch Lite decidedly works best with games that were designed with some thought about the handheld experience. Namely fonts and the UI. So I'll definitely remember that you have one and hit you up down the road.

Smash Bros. gets Byleth from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, begging the question once more of why they don't just make a Fire Emblem exclusive fighting game (really, Soul Calibur x Fire Emblem please thank you). They did make a joke about all the swordsmen in the game, but Byleth gets to use multiple of the Hero Relics from the game, meaning you also got the bow & arrow, spear, and axe.

Knowing there's another fighter pass coming I think softens the collective blow from the community at seeing yet another Fire Emblem character.

Stream still happening here.

EDIT: Presentation is over. Additional Mii Fighter costumes for Altair (Assassin's Creed), Rabbids, Mega Man X, Mega Man Battle Network, and Cuphead (which includes a song).

Richter Belmont and Dark Samus Amiibo on sale tomorrow.

There will be another Fighter Pass releasing with six characters this time, and the characters have already been decided so no point nagging Sakurai on Twitter.

Sakurai will never sleep again and we'll never get that Kid Icarus: Uprising sequel.

ccesarano wrote:

Smash Bros. gets Byleth from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, begging the question once more of why they don't just make a Fire Emblem exclusive fighting game (really, Soul Calibur x Fire Emblem please thank you). They did make a joke about all the swordsmen in the game, but Byleth gets to use multiple of the Hero Relics from the game, meaning you also got the bow & arrow, spear, and axe.

Oof. As much as I love Three Houses, I can't imagine yet another Fire Emblem character going over super well as the Fighter Pack finale. I guess announcing another softens that blow a bit.

I just don't understand why they always select the main Fire Emblem character. Byleth is boring. Characters like Edelgard and Claude have actual personalities, and their fighting styles would be completely different from all previously implemented FE characters.

Awakening gets both, with Chrom, Lucina, and Robin in there. Fates is exclusively Corrin.

The thing is, if you don't do Byleth, then you now have people warring over which character got shunned and is more deserving (I mean, how dare you exclude my Dimitri as not having an actual personality).

Really though, Three Houses did not need representation in Smash. I'll enjoy playing the character but it really is kind of a dull thud of a way to conclude the pass.

Dyni wrote:

Characters like Edelgard and Claude have actual personalities...

I read that first name as "Edgelard" and I was imagining that he is just the CHONKIEST Reaper cosplayer.

Which would also be more personality than the average FE protag.

Also, Smash now officially has as many FE characters as Street Fighter 2's entire playable roster. So there's that.

I never bought the fighter pass and I'm really glad I didn't after today. Fan service is good, but there had to be better characters.

Oh well, no one is forcing me to buy em.

I did buy the fight pass, and have barely played the game since they started announcing characters. And while all of them are neat, none were ones I had enough affinity for to go back and use them.

I don’t imagine I’ll get the next fighter pass unless I plan to go back and play more smash, and only if I really want to play some of the characters once they’re announced.

Lunch games at work every week have been great. We've had 7 players at once almost every week, and others rotating in and out. Pretty sure I'll have to buy the pass just to keep everyone happy.

garion333 wrote:

Fan service is good, but there had to be better characters.

Looking good, Joker!

Not so much the rest of you.

hbi2k wrote:

Also, Smash now officially has as many FE characters as Street Fighter 2's entire playable roster. So there's that.

Assuming you're talking about the original roster of eight and none of the characters added in Championship Edition onward.

My big takeaway from that stat is that, holy crap, fighting games used to ship with just eight characters. No wonder they felt so much more manageable back then.

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Zwickle wrote:
mrtomaytohead wrote:

And now for some more game talk. From a few pages back, buried by all this:

Zwickle wrote:

I picked up Full Metal Furies a few days ago on sale and I am having a blast with it. I don't know if it's gotten much love around here but I wanted to give it a boost regardless.

I've been proclaiming how awesome it is every time I get a chance. It made it onto my GotY list when I first played it. Stalled playing with my wife because we kept getting wiped some point in the final world before the big game-wide puzzle needs to be solved. It's been a while and we both keep saying we should get back to it. Hope you are loving it.

I kept on loving it and finished two nights ago. There were a couple of frustrating fights but they were challenging, not ragequit-inducing. I stuck with Triss the Tank and Erin the Engineer the whole way through. I may come back eventually to try the other classes but I'm going to try other new games before returning to FMF. If I were playing co-op I'd definitely want to jump back in and try the other classes.

I was surprised to read that the general reaction to this game was tepid. It was right up my alley. The sale price got my attention (I saw it while browsing the games on sale) and the trailer sold me on the game, but I would have happily paid full price in retrospect.

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Finally a Fire Emblem character in Smash.

*Legion* wrote:

Finally a Fire Emblem character in Smash.

I've been waiting so long for one to finally join.

Just a friendly reminder that games like Splatoon 2 and ARMS, which both released in the first 6 months after the Switch are still awesome. My wife fired up Splatoon 2 last night and as I watched, I was struck by how some of the added guns (after release) are crazy in a good way. ARMS, of course, was kinda put in a terrible spot, only having 1 month before Splatoon came and squashed any interest in it.

Anything notable in the indie releases lately? I'm looking for my next Slay the Spire obsessions on Switch.

Have you already played Puzzle Quest? It scratches some of that same itch for me.

bigred wrote:

Anything notable in the indie releases lately? I'm looking for my next Slay the Spire obsessions on Switch.

I don't think there's been anything on the level of Slay the Spire recently, but Children of Morta came to Switch not long ago. I quite enjoyed that on PC.

I'm happy to say that Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore is a really solid port of the original. I found the text of the messaging app (what used to be on the game pad) a little small in handheld mode but not too bad. Otherwise, it looks nice and plays well, and it doesn't have the long load times or weird menu lag that the Wii U version did.

It's still JRPG as f*ck, too.

Where does it rate compared to your recent Persona 5 thoughts?

It's really tempting me to use my last Nintendo voucher, as I don't think Animal Crossing will get added to the list.

Stele wrote:

Where does it rate compared to your recent Persona 5 thoughts?

That's a tough question to answer, in part because it gets into some of the things I didn't want to say in the Persona 5 thread.

The two games are similar enough that they'll invite comparison, but there are some key differences. They're both stories of high schoolers who awaken to hidden powers within themselves that allow them to fight against enemies in an unseen world that overlaps with modern Tokyo.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions carries over wholesale the system of elemental strengths and weaknesses that underpins all the Shin Megami Tensei games (including the Persona series). The gimmick in this one is that when you hit an enemy's weakness, you can start a "session attack" which is a chain of follow-up attacks from your teammates that deal bonus damage. In Persona 5, think of it a bit like an automated baton pass.

Just like in Persona 5, hitting enemy weaknesses to turn the tide of combat is really satisfying. It just feels good to do. Both games have that rhythm of probing for enemy weaknesses and figuring out the best ways to exploit them with your team.

Where Persona 5 gets the edge is in its interface and overall playability. It's a really slick game that does a good job of making it easy to get to the abilities you want without a lot of button presses. By comparison, TMS feels like an older design that's a bit more cumbersome and menu-driven. The battle UI has more in common with Persona 3 than Persona 5.

Similarly, the excellent sound work, animations, and little graphical flourishes that keep the pace up in P5 aren't there. There's nothing like the tearaway closeups of a character's face when something dramatic happens. Nothing as cool as an all-out attack animation. So some of the key things that make Persona 5 into "Persona 5!" (voice of awe) just aren't there.

On the other side of that, however, some of the key things that make Persona 5 into "Persona 5..." (voice of disgust) are also not there. There's not really any better way to put it than that TMS just isn't as creepy, and it's not virulently homophobic.

Don't get me wrong: it's still a very male-gaze heavy game with some revealing costumes and an unfortunate habit of introducing female characters with a camera pan up or down their body. That's there, and it sucks. But the constant ogling and harassment and sexual commentary that the girls in Persona 5 are subjected to isn't to be found. Likewise, TMS doesn't dedicate whole scenes to extremely offensive stereotypes of gay men.

If the main mode of P5 is a kind of slick, monochrome cool, the main mode of TMS is a colorful, cheerful optimism. It's a very happy and very peppy game that comes at the question of teenagers finding themselves in a much happier way.

I hate to use a small bit of set decoration to make a broader point about the two games, but it always stood out to me that both games use silhouette of people to depict their crowds and that Persona 5 uses a narrow range of greys and dark colors for its people, and Tokyo Mirage Sessions uses pastel rainbows. It's a little thing, but it illustrates the different attitudes really well, I think.

Also, as an addendum, I didn't finish TMS on Wii U, but it's reportedly a hell of a lot shorter than Persona 5. Somewhere in the range of half as long.

And having spent most of my playtime in Persona 5 recently as a f*cking mouse navigating a giant-ass dungeon, something with a bit less game in it sounds great.

Dyni wrote:
bigred wrote:

Anything notable in the indie releases lately? I'm looking for my next Slay the Spire obsessions on Switch.

I don't think there's been anything on the level of Slay the Spire recently, but Children of Morta came to Switch not long ago. I quite enjoyed that on PC.

Oh yeah, this looks awesome and perfect for the Switch. Thank you!

I think Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE has fewer Fire Emblem characters in it than Smash Bros.