Donald Theriault
Baseball Stars 2 is a solid contender for now while the Super Mega Baseball series avoids starting its service time clock.
Little things in the text set off my editor senses. The plot quickly derails and is so overbearing with the focus on fanservice that I wanted to scream. Maybe PQube should try again with the Judgment 7 version next year, but I'm not holding my breath for it.
Dark Arisen has some of the most unique systems in modern RPGs, and great combat to go along with it. It’s a great adventure, and if they can improve the loads after the inns it’ll be essential.
The end credits for the 3DS started rolling on March 3, 2017 and Persona Q2 is basically the post-credits scene. And it's a good scene that really makes me hyped to hopefully see more of the Persona series on Switch in a fashion besides musou and Joker in Smash. For now, make sure your 3DS is nice and stable, and start mapping those dungeons.
They've addressed a few complaints about the game, especially in handheld mode for me, which is pretty impressive for a year and a half turnaround between games. If the initial load and maps themselves weren't so long as to make it a chore to play in bursts, this could be an all timer. It's not a general, but sometimes you need staff sergeants.
Pillars of Eternity's reputation for quality is well deserved. It's definitely worth checking out, whether on other platforms or when the Switch version is fixed up. For now, the version on Nintendo's latest is an interesting curiosity with some pretty heavy issues. And it's not the first time I've seen that phrase used in relation to an Obsidian-developed game published by another company.
A lot of my interest in Ai was due to the writing talent: though he's done things since, this is the first post-Zero Escape project from Uchikoshi that I've had the chance to play. I definitely want to see where Ai is going next, and just hope that the experience is a little smoother when it goes wide.
If I didn't have a pub's worth of RPGs on the Switch already to deal with, I could see myself putting thousands of hours into Disgaea 4 Complete+. The story is a blast, and the combat is addictive enough while also being a nice change from the huge maps of Three Houses. Right now, D4 is the best bet if you're looking for some humor to go along with your strategy, dood.
It's neat that they brought the core game to the Switch, but I doubt anyone who's put an extensive amount of time (or, Naga forbid, money) into the mobile version won't have an incentive to make the jump. This is likely why my online requests keep timing out: there's not really a market here. And that's sad.
For a first effort, Guardian of Rebirth is a fine read despite some of the minor quirks—and maybe Impey will be a little bit less annoying in the future.
Still a fun experience, and the new options provided by having the Ashen Wolves in my class make me want to get back on the bike and finish the storylines I’ve yet to play myself.
When we didn't have many options for baseball games on Switch, I put way more time into RBI Baseball than would be considered sane. But with the arcade realm owned by the two Super Mega Baseball games and the Arcade Archives, and the best in the business arriving next year, RBI Baseball is probably going to end up as a talking head on a team's postgame show.
As an exploration of modern vampire life, it’s a gripping story, but it’s missing some things that would be needed to make it a better-playing game.
Operencia differs from a lot of the dungeon crawlers on Switch: it's more of a low fantasy story, and its fixed story and chapters helps to differentiate it from the dozens of roguelikes and roguelites we've seen in the past few years. For that alone, Operencia: The Stolen Sun is worth a long look.
Overall, it’s a solid package, but not good as a jumping-in point.
If you're down with all sorts of in-jokes and spent way too much time online in the late 2000s, you probably already picked up Treachery in Beatdown City. If you're still on the fence, it's a brisk experience with a unique style of gameplay, and the dialogue is as skippable as you need it to be. It's a good debut game from a studio I'll be keeping an eye on going forward.
I remember reading about Darius first in early 90s game magazines, and thought I'd have to make do with the console versions. Playing the arcade versions actually made me even more excited to try the console games in the other collection that came out. There's some frustration to be found in this collection, but overall it's another quality batch of shooters for Switch owners.
If you're OK with dealing with text issues—or will speed through too fast to notice—then Collar X Malice is going to hook you. The themes may be disturbing to some, and the M rating the ESRB gave it is definitely deserved, but it left me thinking for a long time after I hit the title screen for the last time. Sometimes, that's just what I need.
I hadn't played Samurai Shodown in any form since a torrid weekend with the Super Nintendo port of the original sometime in the mid-90s, but I was always intrigued by the series from afar. To that end, I'm glad that the Samurai Shodown SNK Collection was a 10 in terms of my quest for knowledge and also has some good fighting action behind it—and by default it's less expensive than buying the games piecemeal in the Archives.
There's a solid game in Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus, even if it's not an environment I don't want to spend any more time in. If you're in the mood for a little sci-fi strategy and are cool with a game featuring heavy doses of faux-religion, then be sure to enlist in the Mechanicus army.