We're about to see the game that truly put Type-Moon on the map this week as of press time in Fate/Stay Night Remastered, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to jump right into it coming off of Tsukihime. Especially knowing that there's another set of stories still coming. It's a long summer's read, but it may be too intense for some: it certainly was for me.
That said, I've learned my lesson and will be waiting until the enhanced version for Metaphor: ReFantazio - which hopefully will come out on the Switch's successor.
Cupid Parasite: Sweet and Spicy Darling might be the first fandisc on the Switch that manages to do to the original what Pokemon Platinum did to Diamond and Pearl: the second attempt completely subsumed the original. There are even reminder points as to what happened with each of the suitors in the original six paths, so newcomers - or people like me who played the original at launch 30 months ago - can jump in and quickly pick up what is being laid down. And with the improved text, it's a no brainer to pick up the sequel.
It's good to see that Sympathy Kiss is strong on the technical end, it just didn't click with me. If you're a little more amenable to dealing with people at the office, you'll be able to get through it quickly and easily. I'm more of the kind who wants to interact with as few people as possible in the run of a day.
I never got into Mario + Rabbids despite multiple attempts, mostly due to the Rabbids, but throwing characters I care about into this formula worked really well for me. Persona 5 Tactica is certainly the most replayable Persona game in years for someone who doesn't try to see every romance option, and if Atlus can get out from the crunch for Persona 3 Reload to fix up the load times this could be a sleeper for best strategy game on Switch.
undefined.The common Gloomhaven community standard is to keep things secret - particularly the per-map side quests, which the game only reveals at the end of the map - so the Switch is fundamentally a great platform to play the digital version on. It can kill a lot of time; each map takes about 45 minutes to an hour, even with or perhaps because I was playing with someone who knew how to manipulate the AI. But I never felt the game dragged at all, and would vastly prefer this digital copy to having to schlep around something bigger than every game console I've ever owned.
It seems as though the Zeboyd partnership is going on hiatus for a bit to recharge the batteries, but This Way Madness Lies is a nice game to go on break with. It's more of a sonnet than a full-on Shakespeare play, and the Switch definitely needs something short in this realm after some of the absolute marathons I've had to deal with recently.
) I don't think the backlog will ever let me see every suitor's ending in Jack Jeanne, but the ones I did reach were worth the extreme amounts of effort I had to put in. And it's nice that we have a proof of concept for "replicating physical performance in a rhythm game" like I asked for last month. Still, hopefully there's a nice long break before the next rhythm novel because I definitely need one.
But as a multiplatform game, the Switch is clearly struggling to handle it, which is odd as THQ Nordic ports on Switch tend to run on par with their counterparts on other consoles. Hopefully this isn't an annual release and it gets some post launch support to clean things up, because as of now it didn't meet the pre-launch goal of being a WWF No Mercy killer. It's more of a WCW/nWo World Tour - a good first effort with potential to be a classic, but it needs a bit more work.
I wasn't really feeling the romance elements in Charade Maniacs, though that may have been because I was trying to figure out the meta-story anyway. It's a solid read that I'll probably rip through again in a few months when they actually SLOW DOWN with these games.
The two localizers of Otomate adventures are teaming up to test my speed-reading skills this month; another Aksys one (that mixes in rhythm game elements?) will be out by the time this review is live and Idea Factory International is dropping one at the end of the month. Maybe that's why Winter's Wish didn't exactly break the strings of my heart.
With the focus on game preservation that we've seen in recent years, I never imagined that the Etrian Odyssey series would be preserved anywhere close to its original form. The fact that they thought it worth bringing to Switch is amazing, and though it didn't come over entirely clean, it's still worth bringing back Fight, Heal, and the rest of the crew for one more dungeon dive.
Said spells still "missed". Thankfully, this didn't happen late enough to be a hard stop on my enjoyment of the game. If you are going to go on the Final Fantasy vision quest, definitely make sure you use the Pixel Remaster to play FFII. If thou must.
It's tempting to ignore the faults of a game if you think it's a favorite - but I can't do that here. I really do miss the things that came later, especially since I would really prefer to swap the Rated E10+ Superstar out of the endgame party for someone who knows what a defense stat is. Still, Final Fantasy IV remains an all-time great RPG, and it's nice to finally have it on Switch in any form.
Now that it's been cleaned up, Norn9: Var Commons is one of the stronger romance novel entries on Switch. With a neat plot, no time to get bored with a suitor because there's still plenty to go, and just enough hints to guess where the common ending will go, it'll be worth some time heading to meet The World.
undefined.It might be tempting to skip Trails to Azure, but even set apart from the exceedingly large franchise it's still another great RPG for the Switch. I'm looking forward to possibly replaying it with more knowledge of the events and try to take on more of the side content, since I had to take a hard critical path to get the review done. If I don't decide to fill in some of those Trails story gaps this spring….
I don't regret taking a few hours to read Seventh Lair, though I did need several minutes to collect myself at the end of the tale. With some cleaned up text, it could be an all-time great visual novella - but for now, it's a solid one with some things worth discussing.
Between Pokemon Scarlet / Violet and this, I really hope I don't have any games in the future that could be great but that I have to start docking for egregious issues. A bad ending to a story isn't as bad as game-spanning tech issues, but the end result ends up being the same; a game worth recommending, but with some major caveats. Especially when the story is 95% of the reason to play the game.
If you're going to get into Witch on the Holy Night, perhaps while waiting for someone to tie George R. R. Martin to a chair long enough to finish off their magnum opus, it's going to be a commitment. 20+ hours of either nudging an analog stick to stop the system from going into screen saving mode or jamming A will get you a well-written story that sets up a lot of things for the future.
The technical issues with the game will eventually be fixed, and what will be left is a great Pokemon experience. If you're still on the fence at this point, it's certainly fair to wait for patches to smooth things out, but at some point I hope everyone can come along for the ride. And based on the opening weekend sales, I might've gotten my wish already.